Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparing Fracture Propagation Tests and Relating Test Results to Snowpack Characteristics

The Propagation Saw Test (PST) and the Extended Column Test (ECT) are two recently and independently developed field tests that indicate the propensity for a slab and weak layer combination to propagate a fracture. University of Calgary researchers performed the PST and ECT throughout the 2008 winter season along with other standard stability tests to establish their strengths and limitations. The PST and ECT were compared side-by-side in over 80 test pits with close to 600 individual test results throughout the 2008 winter in the Columbia Mountains of British Columbia, Canada. We tested numerous slab and weak layer combinations including tracking four persistent weak layers from initial burial to depths of over two meters. Field observations and initial analysis indicate correlations between slab hardness, weak layer depth, and propagation propensity, and hint at how these snowpack characteristics influence the observed results of each test. We discuss the specific slab and weak layer combinations that appear to have high, low, or no propagation propensity, and suggest particular conditions under which one test is more appropriate than the other for aiding forecasters in assessing propagation propensity.
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Ever heard of the kidney heist? Or the Halloween candy booby-trapped with razor blades? Want to make orientation as memorable as these urban legends? This book provides simple and effective ways to do just that. For orientation professionals, the challenge of presenting a volume of important information in a very small amount of time and making it stick is often daunting. Too frequently, stories of students who walk into other departments and say things like “No one ever told me that! ” are circulated around campus, giving pause to individuals that know that the material in question was covered in orientation. The book is a call to action and a beacon of hope for anyone interested in making their messages more salient and memorable. Made to Stick is based on the idea that some ideas are more memorable or “sticky,” than others. “Stickiness” is a concept borrowed from Malcolm Gladwell’s book on social phenomena, The Tipping Point. According to the authors, “stickiness” occurs when ideas are “understood and remembered, and they have a lasting impact – they change your audience’s opinions or behavior. ” Both Dan and Chip Heath have spent the last decade exploring this topic from multiple angles. Chip Heath, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University, spent years doing extensive research on urban legends and topics like, why Nostradamus’ prophecies are still read, why Chicken Soup for the Soul stories are inspirational, and why ineffective folk remedies persist. Dan Heath, a former Harvard researcher, studied the most effective teaching techniques of the nation’s top instructors as a part of his research for Thinkwell, the multimedia textbook company he founded. Through their collective experience, the Heath brothers have come up with six factors that seem to affect the stickiness of an idea: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions, and stories. These factors can easily be recalled using the acronym SUCCESs (a pneumonic device designed by the authors to make their message stick). Each chapter contains a myriad of examples, exercises, and illustrations to help the reader understand and remember the messages presented. The result is a “sticky” message that the reader will be eager to share. Chapter One of the Heath brothers’ creation addresses the need for messages to be simple and get at the core of the idea being communicated. This is easier said
The Prices of Goods and Services in New Zealand: An International Comparison

This paper analyses the latest (2005) data available from the World Bankâ€™s InternationalComparison Program (ICP). It assesses the extent to which the prices of goods and services in New Zealand (NZ) differ from those observed in other OECD countries, and Australia in particular. The main objective is to answer the question: â€œAre the prices of specific goods and services especially high or low in New Zealand by international standards? â€ The answer appears to be â€œyesâ€ , leading naturally to the further questions of: â€œwhy, and what might the consequences be for prices and productivity in the wider New Zealand economy? â€ International price comparisons, even those undertaken carefully such as the ICP, are fraught with difficulties and results should be interpreted cautiously. However, a number of broad features of price level in NZ relative to other OECD countries stand out. Most prominently, goods and services associated with investment in general, and property, construction and utilities (water, gas, electricity) in particular, appear to be relatively expensive in NZ. Secondly, passenger transport (excluding private motor vehicles), and alcohol & tobacco, prices are high relative to other countries. The former involve transport industries - such as air and rail transport - that are subject to domestic and international regulation, or have some quasi-monopoly power within the NZ economy. In some cases, lack of economies of scale may also be relevant due to the limited size of the domestic NZ market. High alcohol, and especially tobacco, prices appear to be at least partly related to relatively high excise levels in NZ, though this is balanced to some extent by relatively low VAT/GST rates. Thirdly prices for key exportable products from New Zealand are relative cheap â€“ especially beef/veal/lamb, fish, and dairy products such as butter which may reflect New Zealandâ€™s comparative advantage in such goods. By contrast expensive tradeable products include poultry, pork and fresh milk services that are largely government provided â€“ such as education, health and social protection, and hence are inherently difficult to measure or interpret â€“ are also relatively inexpensive in NZ, reflecting NZâ€™s relatively low average wage levels within the OECD, despite higher intermediate and capital input costs. The large share of wages in total costs in these services make them important determinants of measured (non-market) prices in these activities.
Correlates of HIV Risk Reduction Self-Efficacy among Youth in South Africa

Even though a decline in HIV prevalence has been reported among South African youth 15–24 from 10.3% in 2005 to 8.6% in 2008, the prevalence remains disproportionately high for females overall in comparison to males. This study examines factors associated by HIV risk reduction self-efficacy of South African youth as part of an evaluation of the impact of loveLife, a youth focused HIV prevention programme. A cross-sectional population-based household survey was conducted with persons of ages 18 to 24 years in four selected provinces in South Africa. Among female respondents (n = 1007), factors associated with high self-efficacy in the adjusted model were having a low HIV risk perception, HIV/AIDS stigma, ever using drugs, and having life goals. Male respondents (n = 1127) with high self-efficacy were more likely to have been tested for HIV, have concurrent sexual partners, have had a transactional sex partner in lifetime, a low HIV risk perception, difficulty in having condoms, agreed with coercive sex, high relationship control, and had loveLife face-to-face programme participation. The factors identified with high self-efficacy and HIV-sexual risk behaviour may be considered to strengthen youth HIV prevention programmes in South Africa.
$(M,p,k)$-Friendly Points: A Table-Based Method to Evaluate Trigonometric Function

Linear (order-1) function evaluation schemes, such as bipartite and multipartite tables, are usually effective for low-precision approximations. For high-output precision, the lookup table size is often too large for practical use. This brief investigates the so-called (M,p,k) scheme that reduces the range of an input argument to a very small interval so that trigonometric functions can be approximated with very small lookup tables and a few additions/subtractions. An optimized hardware architecture is presented and implemented in both a field-programmable gate array device and standard-cell-based technology. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme achieves more than a 50% reduction in total chip area compared with the best linear approach for a 24-bit evaluation.
Dense Molecular Gas and the Role of Star Formation in the Host Galaxies of Quasi-stellar Objects

New millimeter-wave CO and HCN observations of the host galaxies of infrared-excess Palomar-Green (PG) quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) previously detected in CO are presented. These observations are designed to assess the validity of using the infrared luminosity to estimate star formation rates of luminous active galactic nuclei (AGNs) by determining the relative significance of dust heating by young, massive stars and AGNs in QSO hosts and IRAS galaxies with warm, AGN-like infrared colors. The analysis of these data is based, in part, on evidence that HCN traces high-density (>104 cm-3) molecular gas, and that the starburst-to-HCN luminosity ratio, LSB/L, of IRAS-detected galaxies is constant. The new CO data provide a confirmation of prior claims that PG QSO hosts have high infrared-to-CO luminosity ratios, LIR/L, relative to IRAS galaxies of comparable LIR. Such high LIR/L ratios may be due to significant heating of dust by the QSO or to an increased star formation efficiency in QSO hosts relative to the bulk of the luminous IRAS galaxy population. The HCN data show a similar trend, with the PG QSO host I Zw 1 and most of the warm IRAS galaxies having high LIR/L (>1600) relative to the cool IRAS galaxy population, for which the median ⟨LIR/L⟩cool ∼ 890. If the assumption is made that the infrared emission from cool IRAS galaxies is reprocessed light from embedded star-forming regions, then high values of LIR/L are likely the result of dust heating by the AGNs. Further, if the median ratio of L/L ∼ 0.06 observed for Seyfert galaxies and I Zw 1 is applied to the PG QSOs not detected in HCN, then the derived LIR/L values correspond to a stellar contribution to the production of LIR of ∼7%-39%, and star formation rates of ∼2-37 M⊙ yr-1 are derived for the QSO hosts. The corresponding values for the warm galaxies are ∼10%-100% and ∼3-220 M⊙ yr-1. Alternatively, if the far-infrared is adopted as the star formation component of the total infrared in cool galaxies, i.e., ⟨LFIR/L⟩cool ∼ LSB/L, the stellar contributions in QSO hosts and warm galaxies to their LFIR are up to 35% and 10% higher, respectively, than the percentages derived for LIR. This raises the possibility that the LFIR in several of the PG QSO hosts, including I Zw 1, could be due entirely to dust heated by young, massive stars. Finally, there is no evidence that the global HCN emission is enhanced relative to CO in galaxies hosting luminous AGNs.
Association between xanthine dehydrogenase tag single nucleotide polymorphisms and essential hypertension

The present study aimed to investigate the association between xanthine dehydrogenase (XDH) gene polymorphism and essential hypertension in the rural Han Chinese population of Fuxin, Liaoning. Han Chinese individuals, who had lived in rural areas of Fuxin, were selected as subjects for the present study. A total of 521 unrelated patients with hypertension were selected, along with a further 533 unrelated individuals with normal blood pressure, in order to serve as controls. Five tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) of the XDH gene were selected. An estimation of SNP allele frequency was determined using DNA pooling and pyrosequencing methods. Prior to Bonferroni correction, T allele frequency for rs206811 was significantly higher in patients with hypertension, as compared with the controls (64.1 vs. 59.4%; P=0.031); C allele frequency for rs1042039 was significantly higher in patients with hypertension, as compared with the controls (66.1 vs. 60.6%; P=0.011), C allele frequency for rs1054889 was significantly lower in patients with hypertension, as compared with the controls (38.8 vs. 44.8%; P=0.007); and A allele frequency for rs2073316 was significantly lower in patients with hypertension, as compared with the controls (29.2 vs. 34.4%; P=0.013). However, once a Bonferroni correction for multiple testing was applied, the XDH gene polymorphisms rs1042039, rs1054889, and rs2073316 were shown to be associated with hypertension (P=0.044, 0.035, and 0.039, respectively). These results suggest that the XDH gene polymorphisms rs1042039, rs1054889, and rs2073316 may be associated with hypertension in the rural Han Chinese population.
Decomposing the Gender Gap in Cognitive Skills in a Poor Rural Economy

Girls lag markedly behind boys in education in many developing countries, which may slow economic growth and increase inequity. This paper uses indicators of the output of the education production process, cognitive skills, to characterize and to investigate the determinants of the large educational gender gap in rural Pakistan. Local school availability accounts for about a third of the total cognitive achievement gender gap and over two-fifths of that in numeracy, which implies that policies that increased local school availability for girls could reduce substantially the gender gaps in cognitive skills. To further reduce these gender gaps will require policies that focus on the demand side of the market, where, our results suggest, the response to modest changes in incentives may be high.
The effectiveness of interventions in workplace health promotion as to maintain the working capacity of health care personal

Background The increasing proportion of elderly people with respective care requirements and within the total population stands against aging personnel and staff reduction in the field of health care where employees are exposed to high load factors. Health promotion interventions may be a possibility to improve work situations and behavior. Methods A systematic literature search is conducted in 32 databases limited to English and German publications since 1990. Moreover, internet-searches are performed and the reference lists of identified articles are scanned. The selection of literature was done by two reviewers independently according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. Data extraction and tables of evidence are verified by a second expert just like the assessment of risk of bias by means of the Cochrane Collaboration’s tool. Results We identified eleven intervention studies and two systematic reviews. There were three randomized controlled trials (RCT) and one controlled trial without randomization (CCT) on the improvement of physical health, four RCT and two CCT on the improvement of psychological health and one RCT on both. Study duration ranged from four weeks to two years and the number of participants included from 20 to 345, with a median of 56. Interventions and populations were predominantly heterogeneous. In three studies intervention for the improvement of physical health resulted in less complaints and increased strength and flexibility with statistically significant differences between groups. Regarding psychological health interventions lead to significantly decreased intake of analgesics, better stress management, coping with workload, communication skills and advanced training. Discussion Taking into consideration the small to very small sample sizes, other methodological flaws like a high potential of bias and poor quality of reporting the validity of the results has to be considered as limited. Due to the heterogeneity of health interventions, study populations with differing job specializations and different lengths of study durations and follow-up periods, the comparison of results would not make sense. Conclusions Further research is necessary with larger sample sizes, with a sufficient study duration and follow-up, with a lower risk of bias, by considering of relevant quality criteria and with better reporting in publications.
The CIDOC CRM – an Ontological Approach to Semantic Interoperability of Metadata

This paper presents the methodology that has been successfully employed over the past 5 years by an interdisciplinary team to create the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM), a high-level ontology to enable information integration for cultural heritage data and their correlation with library and archive information. The CIDOC CRM is now in the process to become an ISO standard. The paper justifies in detail the methodology and design by functional requirements and gives examples of its contents. The CIDOC CRM analyses the common conceptualizations behind data and metadata structures to support data transformation, mediation and merging. It is argued that such ontologies are property-centric, in contrast to terminological systems, and should be built with different methodologies. It is demonstrated that ontological and epistemological arguments are equally important for an effective design, in particular when dealing with knowledge from the past in any domain. It is assumed that the presented methodology and the upper level of the ontology are applicable in a by far wider domain.
New Criteria for Evaluating Methods of Identifying Hot Spots

Identification of hot spots, also known as the sites with promise, black spots, accident-prone locations, or priority investigation locations, is an important and routine activity for improving the overall safety of roadway networks. Extensive literature focuses on methods for hot spot identification (HSID). A subset of this considerable literature is dedicated to conducting performance assessments of various HSID methods. A central issue in comparing HSID methods is the development and selection of quantitative and qualitative performance measures or criteria. The authors contend that currently employed HSID assessment criteria–namely false positives and false negatives–are necessary but not sufficient, and additional criteria are needed to exploit the ordinal nature of site ranking data. With the intent to equip road safety professionals and researchers with more useful tools to compare the performances of various HSID methods and to improve the level of HSID assessments, this paper proposes four quantitative HSID evaluation tests that are, to the authors’ knowledge, new and unique. These tests evaluate different aspects of HSID method performance, including reliability of results, ranking consistency, and false identification consistency and reliability. It is intended that road safety professionals apply these different evaluation tests in addition to existing tests to compare the performances of various HSID methods, and then select the most appropriate HSID method to screen road networks to identify sites that require further analysis. This work demonstrates four new criteria using 3 years of Arizona road section accident data and four commonly applied HSID methods [accident frequency ranking, accident rate ranking, accident reduction potential, and empirical Bayes (EB)]. The EB HSID method reveals itself as the superior method in most of the evaluation tests. In contrast, identifying hot spots using accident rate rankings performs the least well among the tests. The accident frequency and accident reduction potential methods perform similarly, with slight differences explained. The authors believe that the four new evaluation tests offer insight into HSID performance heretofore unavailable to analysts and researchers.
Recurrent triploidy of maternal origin

We report the occurrence of triploid preimplantation embryos following in vitro fertilization (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) in a woman with two previously‐identified triploid conceptuses which spontaneously underwent fetal demise at 10 and 23 weeks' gestation. An error in maternal meiosis II is proposed as the most likely cause. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Integrating species distribution models (SDMs) and phylogeography for two species of Alpine Primula

The major intention of the present study was to investigate whether an approach combining the use of niche-based palaeodistribution modeling and phylo-geography would support or modify hypotheses about the Quaternary distributional history derived from phylogeographic methods alone. Our study system comprised two closely related species of Alpine Primula. We used species distribution models based on the extant distribution of the species and last glacial maximum (LGM) climate models to predict the distribution of the two species during the LGM. Phylogeographic data were generated using amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs). In Primula hirsuta, models of past distribution and phylogeographic data are partly congruent and support the hypothesis of widespread nunatak survival in the Central Alps. Species distribution models (SDMs) allowed us to differentiate between alpine regions that harbor potential nunatak areas and regions that have been colonized from other areas. SDMs revealed that diversity is a good indicator for nunataks, while rarity is a good indicator for peripheral relict populations that were not source for the recolonization of the inner Alps. In P. daonensis, palaeo-distribution models and phylogeographic data are incongruent. Besides the uncertainty inherent to this type of modeling approach (e.g., relatively coarse 1-km grain size), disagreement of models and data may partly be caused by shifts of ecological niche in both species. Nevertheless, we demonstrate that the combination of palaeo-distribution modeling with phylogeographical approaches provides a more differentiated picture of the distributional history of species and partly supports (P. hirsuta) and partly modifies (P. daonensis and P. hirsuta) hypotheses of Quaternary distributional history. Some of the refugial area indicated by palaeodistribution models could not have been identified with phylogeographic data.
Crossover Designs in Software Engineering Experiments: Benefits and Perils

In experiments with crossover design subjects apply more than one treatment. Crossover designs are widespread in software engineering experimentation: they require fewer subjects and control the variability among subjects. However, some researchers disapprove of crossover designs. The main criticisms are: the carryover threat and its troublesome analysis. Carryover is the persistence of the effect of one treatment when another treatment is applied later. It may invalidate the results of an experiment. Additionally, crossover designs are often not properly designed and/or analysed, limiting the validity of the results. In this paper, we aim to make SE researchers aware of the perils of crossover experiments and provide risk avoidance good practices. We study how another discipline (medicine) runs crossover experiments. We review the SE literature and discuss which good practices tend not to be adhered to, giving advice on how they should be applied in SE experiments. We illustrate the concepts discussed analysing a crossover experiment that we have run. We conclude that crossover experiments can yield valid results, provided they are properly designed and analysed, and that, if correctly addressed, carryover is no worse than other validity threats.