Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Profiling of Saharan dust and biomass-burning smoke with multiwavelength polarization Raman lidar at Cape Verde

Extensive lidar measurements of Saharan dust and biomass-burning smoke were performed with one airborne and three ground-based instruments in the framework of the second part of the SAharan Mineral dUst experiMent (SAMUM-2a) during January and February of 2008 at Cape Verde. Further lidar observations with one system only were conducted during May and June of 2008 (SAMUM-2b). The active measurements were supported by Sun photometer observations. During winter, layers of mineral dust from the Sahara and biomass-burning smoke from southern West Africa pass Cape Verde on their way to South America while pure dust layers cross the Atlantic on their way to the Caribbean during summer. The mean 500-nm aerosol optical thickness (AOT) observed during SAMUM-2a was 0.35 ± 0.18. SAMUM-2a observations showed transport of pure dust within the lowermost 1.5 km of the atmospheric column. In the height range from 1.5 to 5.0 km, mixed dust/smoke layers with mean lidar ratios of 67 ± 14 sr at 355 and 532 nm, respectively, prevailed. Within these layers, wavelength-independent linear particle depolarization ratios of 0.12–0.18 at 355, 532, and 710 nm indicate a large contribution (30–70%) of mineral dust to the measured optical properties. Ångström exponents for backscatter and extinction of around 0.7 support this finding. Mean extinction coefficients in the height range between 2 and 4 km were 66 ± 6 Mm−1 at 355 nm and 48 ± 5 Mm−1 at 532 nm. Comparisons with airborne high-spectral-resolution lidar observations show good agreement within the elevated layers. 3–5 km deep dust layers where observed during SAMUM-2b. These layers showed optical properties similar to the ones of SAMUM-1 in Morocco with a mean 500-nm AOT of 0.4 ± 0.2. Dust extinction coefficients were about 80 ± 6 Mm−1 at 355 and 532 nm. Dust lidar ratios were 53 ± 10 sr at 355 and 532 nm, respectively. Dust depolarization ratios showed an increase with wavelength from 0.31 ± 0.10 at 532 nm to 0.37 ± 0.07 at 710 nm.
Evaluating the impact of managed wildfires as a restoration tool in southwestern ponderosa pine forests

Executive Summary Predating the 20 th-century fires in the southwestern U.S. burned regularly and at low intensities. These ponderosa pine-dominated forests have become overgrown and dense as a result of fire exclusion and suppression policies. Continual negligence of prevention treatments such as canopy thinning and fuel reduction programs has led to worsening fires. Yet fires are a key process in structuring and regulating the function of southwestern ponderosa pine ecosystems. Naturally ignited fires that are allowed to spread without active suppression are known as managed wildfires or resource benefit fires as they provide resource benefits such as fuel reduction or habitat creation. Managed wildfires have the potential to help reshape the landscape of the West and have only recently been used as a tool in an effort to return current forest stands within a historical range of natural variability. Historical reference points are the best estimate of a functioning and resilient ecosystem as they reflect the forests' evolutionary ecology. As such, the natural range of variability serves as the basis for which restoration ecologists and resource managers restore these forests' composition. The natural references are estimated by gathering data from a variety of sources, including historical photos, early forest inventories and land surveys, as well as dendrochronological stand reconstructions. The Coconino National Forest has one of the highest natural fire occurrences in the United States. Only since 2009 have resource managers in the Coconino National Forest been able to consider the flexible implementation of fire management for ecosystem services and resource benefit objectives. This study examines (1) the effects of eight recent wildfires managed for resource benefit use on stand structure in the Mogollon Rim District, Coconino National Forest, Arizona, (2) the prolonged impacts of simulated and repeated fires, and (3) the combination of management activities necessary to restore current stands within a natural range of variability. This study used the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) and Fire & Fuels Extension (FFE) to simulate the effects of fire on trees per acre and basal area across multiple management scenarios and varying time scales. FVS simulates how forest vegetation develops through succession, and responds to disturbances and a variety of management actions. FFE 4 | T e m p e s t integrates FVS with models of fire behavior, fire effects, and fuel and snag dynamics to simulate management scenarios. Seven simulations were run and included scenarios such as the re-introduction of …
Automatic hemorrhage detection in color fundus images based on gradual removal of vascular branches

Hemorrhages in color fundus images usually vary in size and shape, and some are even connected with the retinal vasculature such that they are often omitted by previous detection methods. In this paper, we propose a new method to deal with these problems. During the hemorrhage candidate extraction stage, dark regions and retinal vasculature are segmented out respectively. Their individual advantages are fused together into a binary image with good vascular continuity. Then the gradual removal of vascular branches is applied to generate hemorrhage candidates. In the classification stage, a SVM classifier using 49 features is trained to classify the candidates into hemorrhages and non-hemorrhages. The experiments on DIARETDB1 and DIARETDB0 show that our method achieves good performance on sensitivity and specificity, especially at lesion level.
Quality of life in postmenopausal women with reduced bone mineral density: psychometric evaluation of the Polish version of QUALEFFO-41

Introduction Evaluation of the quality of life of patients with osteoporosis concerns the physical, emotional, social and pain quality of life domains. The aim of the research was to describe the psychometric properties of the Polish version of QUALEFFO-41 in 253 Polish postmenopausal women with osteopenia or osteoporosis and in 132 postmenopausal women with normal BMD. Material and methods The internal reliability of QUALEFFO-41 was studied using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. The reproducibility of the QUALEFFO-41 scales was assessed using Pearson’s correlation. The capacity of questions to discriminate between women with reduced bone mineral density (BMD) and normal subjects was assessed by conditional logistic regression to derive an odds ratio with 95% confidence intervals. The discriminative power, which measures the ability of the questionnaire to discriminate between patients, was assessed by clinical validity. Additionally, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were constructed to assess the ability of QUALEFFO-41. Results Cronbach’s α coefficient reflecting the reliability and repeatability of the instrument for all domains was satisfactory. Results of scores for domains of QUALEFFO-41 and the score for total QUALEFFO-41 demonstrate a significant difference (p < 0.001) among all groups; only in the case of the pain domain was there a significant difference at the level of p < 0.01 between normal subjects and osteoporotic patients. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis demonstrated a good discriminating capacity of individual domains and total QUALEFFO-41 score. Conclusions The Polish version of QUALEFFO-41 can be used among patients with reduced BMD compared to normal subjects, independently of vertebral fractures, as it is coherent and discriminates well between women with reduced BMD and normal subjects.
The uncanny advantage of using androids in cognitive and social science research

The development of robots that closely resemble human beings can contribute to cognitive research. An android provides an experimental apparatus that has the potential to be controlled more precisely than any human actor. However, preliminary results indicate that only very humanlike devices can elicit the broad range of responses that people typically direct toward each other. Conversely, to build androids capable of emulating human behavior, it is necessary to investigate social activity in detail and to develop models of the cognitive mechanisms that support this activity. Because of the reciprocal relationship between android development and the exploration of social mechanisms, it is necessary to establish the field of android science. Androids could be a key testing ground for social, cognitive, and neuroscientific theories as well as platform for their eventual unification. Nevertheless, subtle flaws in appearance and movement can be more apparent and eerie in very humanlike robots. This uncanny phenomenon may be symptomatic of entities that elicit our model of human other but do not measure up to it. If so, very humanlike robots may provide the best means of pinpointing what kinds of behavior are perceived as human, since deviations from human norms are more obvious in them than in more mechanical-looking robots. In pursuing this line of inquiry, it is essential to identify the mechanisms involved in evaluations of human likeness. One hypothesis is that, by playing on an innate fear of death, an uncanny robot elicits culturally-supported defense responses for coping with death’s inevitability. An experiment, which borrows from methods used in terror management research, was performed to test this hypothesis. [Thomson Reuters Essential Science Indicators: Fast Breaking Paper in Social Sciences, May 2008]
Parsing Indian Languages with MaltParser

This paper describes the application of MaltParser, a transition-based dependency parser, to three Indian languages – Bangla, Hindi and Telugu – in the context of the NLP Tools Contest at ICON 2009. In the final evaluation, MaltParser was ranked second among the participating systems and achieved an unlabeled attachment score close to 90% for Bangla and Hindi, and over 85% for Telugu, while the labeled attachment score was 15–25 percentage points lower. It is likely that the high unlabeled accuracy is achieved thanks to a relatively low syntactic complexity in the data sets, while the low labeled accuracy is due to the limited amounts of training data.
Prevalence of chromosomal abnormalities and timing of karyotype analysis in patients with recurrent implantation failure (RIF) following assisted reproduction

Aims: To analyze the prevalence and type of karyotype abnormalities in RIF patients and to evaluate the adequate timing for analysis and the presence of possible risk factors. Methods: 615 patients (317 women and 298 men) with RIF, having undergone at least 3 sequential failed IVF/ICSI cycles prior to karyotype analysis, were included in this study. Anomaly rates found were compared with published series. Results: Chromosomal abnormalities were diagnosed in 2.1% of patients (13/615): 8 females (2.5%) and 5 males (1.7%) which is significantly higher for the females than in unselected newborns (0.8%) and normo-ovulatory women (0.6%) but lower than in women with high-order implantation failure (10.8%). No significant differences were found with couples at the start of IVF/ICSI (2.0%). Karyotyping all patients prior to IVF/ICSI results in a higher cost than selecting RIF patients. Two subgroups showed an increased prevalence of abnormalities: secondary infertile women with a history of only miscarriages (9.1%) and women with female infertility (6.0%). Conclusion: A karyotype analysis is indicated in all women with RIF. Nulliparous women with a history of miscarriage and women with documented infertility are at greater risk of CA and are to be advised to undergo karyotyping.
Early Adolescent MK-801 Exposure Impairs the Maturation of Ventral Hippocampal Control of Basolateral Amygdala Drive in the Adult Prefrontal Cortex

The adolescent susceptibility to the onset of psychiatric disorders is only beginning to be understood when factoring in the development of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The functional maturation of the PFC is dependent upon proper integration of glutamatergic inputs from the ventral hippocampus (vHipp) and the basolateral amygdala (BLA). Here we assessed how transient NMDAR blockade during adolescence alters the functional interaction of vHipp–BLA inputs in regulating PFC plasticity. Local field potential recordings were used to determine changes in long-term depression (LTD) and long-term potentiation (LTP) of PFC responses resulting from vHipp and BLA high-frequency stimulation in adult rats that received repeated injections of saline or the NMDAR antagonist MK-801 from postnatal day 35 (P35) to P40. We found that early adolescent MK-801 exposure elicited an age- and input-specific dysregulation of vHipp–PFC plasticity, characterized by a shift from LTD to LTP without altering the BLA-induced LTP. Data also showed that the vHipp normally resets the LTP state of BLA transmission; however, this inhibitory regulation is absent following early adolescent MK-801 treatment. This deficit was reminiscent of PFC responses seen in drug-naive juveniles. Notably, local prefrontal upregulation of GABAAα1 function completely restored vHipp functionality and its regulation of BLA plasticity in MK-801-treated rats. Thus, NMDAR signaling is critical for the periadolescent acquisition of a GABA-dependent hippocampal control of PFC plasticity, which enables the inhibitory control of the prefrontal output by the vHipp. A dysregulation of this pathway can alter PFC processing of other converging afferents such as those from the BLA.
A study of entrepreneurial intentions of students at FET colleges in South Africa.

II DECLARATION . III DEDICATION . IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . V TABLE OF CONTENTS . VI LIST OF TABLES . X LIST OF FIGURES . XII CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION . 1 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY . 1 1.1 CONTEXT OF THE STUDY . 2 1.2 1.2. 1 SOUTH AFRICA’S NEED OF SMES FOR ECONOMIC GROWTH . 2 1.2. 2 THE PROBLEM OF YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT . 3 PROBLEM STATEMENT . 3 1.3 1.3. 1 MAIN PROBLEM . 4 1.3. 2 SUB-PROBLEMS . 5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY . 6 1.4 DELIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY . 8 1.5 DEFINITION OF TERMS . 9 1.6 ASSUMPTIONS . 12 1.7 1.7. 1 RESEARCH ASSUMPTIONS . 12 1.7. 2 RESEARCH ETHICS. 12 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW . 13 2.
Determinants of Commercial Banks’ Efficiency: Evidence from 11 CEE Countries

This study estimates bank efficiencies and their determinants for a sample of 11 Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) over the 2005–2008 period. Contrary to previous studies, we estimated cost and revenue efficiency using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), which allowed us to focus on both the input and output sides of banks’ efficiency. Our second stage analysis includes testing of the separability assumption and estimation of the truncated regression developed by Simar and Wilson (2007). We found evidence that: i) the size and financial capitalization of the bank are positively associated with cost and revenue efficiency; ii) foreign banks in CEEC are more cost efficient but less revenue efficient than domestic banks, suggesting different banking behavior between foreign and domestic banks; and iii) the loans-to-assets ratio was negatively associated with cost efficiency but positively associated with revenue efficiency, further stressing two different aspects of banking behavior in CEEC.
Middle managers and the environment: the perspective of the purchasing and supply function

Management literature and practice increasingly recognise that middle managers can make an important contribution to organisational success. For this, they often utilise a boundary-spanning role, which gives them access to knowledge held by external stakeholders. In order to distil factors that hamper or aid middle managers in contributing to organisational success, this study examined one subgroup of middle management with a salient boundary-spanning role, namely purchasing and supply chain managers and their involvement in environmental initiatives in the supply chain. The results of our study, however, contrast with the literature on middle managers generally, as the purchasing and supply chain managers were found to deliver a suboptimal environmental performance across key areas of managing supply. Such a conclusion has important repercussions for the literature on middle management as it calls for more attention to the conditions the individual manager is working under rather than generalising across this hugely diverse group.
Comparison of cleaning efficiency and deformation characteristics of Twisted File and ProTaper rotary instruments

Objective: The objective of the following study is to compare the cleaning efficiency and deformation characteristics of Twisted File (TF) and ProTaper (PT) nickel-titanium rotary instruments in root canal preparation. Materials and Methods: A total of 52 canals from 26 extracted maxillary first molars were randomly assigned into two groups of each including 13 mesiobuccal and 12 distobuccal (DB) canals. Two DB canals were as blank controls. After preparation with TF and PT, we recorded the preparation time and evaluate the amounts of debris and smear layer at apical, middle and coronal canals under scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Three cross-sections of canals at 3 mm, 5 mm and 7 mm from the apex foramens were scanned before and after preparation under micro-computed tomography. Changes of the cross-section area (CSA) at the three levels were calculated with Photoshop CS4. File deformation was also investigated under SEM. Two groups were statistically compared with Mann-Whitney test and independent sample t-test. Results: Less debris and smear layer were found in coronal regions of canals prepared with TF (P = 0.006, P = 0.001, respectively). TF group displayed more CSA change than PT group (P = 0.045) at cross-sections of 5 mm from the apex foramens and took significantly less preparation time than PT group did (P = 9.06 Χ 10 −28 ). All five TF files without obvious micro-cracks and two out of 25 PT files with many micro-cracks showed visible unwound deformation. Conclusion: Neither TF nor PT achieves complete cleanliness of canal walls. Their deformation features might indicate different fracture resistance. TF single-file technique would substantially shorten the time of root canal preparation.
A Comparative Study of the Performance of IR Models on Duplicate Bug Detection

Open source projects incorporate bug triagers to help with the task of bug report assignment to developers. One of the tasks of a triager is to identify whether an incoming bug report is a duplicate of a pre-existing report. In order to detect duplicate bug reports, a triager either relies on his memory and experience or on the search capabilities of the bug repository. Both these approaches can be time consuming for the triager and may also lead to the misidentification of duplicates. In the literature, several approaches to automate duplicate bug report detection have been proposed. However, there has not been an exhaustive comparison of the performance of different IR models, especially with topic-based ones such as LSI and LDA. In this paper, we compare the performance of the traditional vector space model (using different weighting schemes) with that of topic based models, leveraging heuristics that incorporate exception stack frames, surface features, summary and long description from the free-form text in the bug report. We perform experiments on subsets of bug reports from Eclipse and Firefox and achieve a recall rate of 60% and 58% respectively. We find that word-based models, in particular a Log-Entropy based weighting scheme, outperform topic based ones such as LSI, LDA and Random Projections. Our findings also suggests that for the problem of duplicate bug detection, it is important to consider a project's domain and characteristics to devise a set of heuristics to achieve optimal results.
Plasma ropivacaine concentrations after ultrasound-guided transversus abdominis plane block.

BACKGROUND The transversus abdominis plane block is a novel technique involving injection of local anaesthetic between the internal oblique and the transversus abdominis muscles of the abdominal wall. It is possible that injection of a large dose of local anaesthetic into a relatively vascular plane may result in toxic concentrations. One previously published study examined plasma lidocaine concentrations after transversus abdominus plane block and showed potentially toxic plasma concentrations. Although ropivacaine is most commonly used for this technique, plasma concentrations of ropivacaine after this block have not been reported previously. METHODS Adult female patients undergoing elective open gynaecological surgery received bilateral ultrasound-guided transverse abdominal plane blocks before surgical incision (3 mg kg(-1) of ropivacaine diluted to 40 ml). Venous blood was collected each 15 min for the first hour, each 30 min for the second hour, and then at 3, 4, 12, and 24 h post-block. RESULTS Twenty-eight patients were recruited. The mean (sd) peak total ropivacaine concentration occurred 30 min post-injection and was 2.54 (sd 0.75) µg ml(-1). The highest measured concentration was 4.00 µg ml(-1), also 30 min post-injection. Mean total concentrations remained above 2.20 µg ml(-1) for up to 90 min post-injection. The mean unbound peak venous concentration was 0.14 (0.05) µg ml(-1), and the peak was 0.25 µg ml(-1). CONCLUSIONS Transversus abdominus plane block using 3 mg kg(-1) of ropivacaine produces venous plasma concentrations that are potentially neurotoxic, although broadly consistent with plasma levels found after injection at other comparable sites.