Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Physical forcing and the dynamics of the pelagic ecosystem in the eastern tropical Pacific: simulations with ENSO-scale and global-warming climate drivers

We used a model of the pelagic ecosystem in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean to explore how climate variation at El Nino  Southern Oscillation (ENSO) scales might affect animals at middle and upper trophic levels. We developed two physical-forcing scenarios: (1) physical effects on phytoplankton biomass and (2) simultaneous physical effects on phytoplankton biomass and predator recruitment. We simulated the effects of climate-anomaly pulses, climate cycles, and global warming. Pulses caused oscillations to propagate through the ecosystem; cycles affected the shapes of these oscillations; and warming caused trends. We concluded that biomass trajectories of single populations at middle and upper trophic levels cannot be used to detect bottom-up effects, that direct physical effects on predator recruitment can be the dominant source of interannual variability in pelagic ecosystems, that such direct effects may dampen top-down control by fisheries, and that predictions about the effects of climate change m.
Evolution of Electrical, Chemical, and Structural Properties of Transparent and Conducting Chemically Derived Graphene Thin Films

A detailed description of the electronic properties, chemical state, and structure of uniform single and few‐layered graphene oxide (GO) thin films at different stages of reduction is reported. The residual oxygen content and structure of GO are monitored and these chemical and structural characteristics are correlated to electronic properties of the thin films at various stages of reduction. It is found that the electrical characteristics of reduced GO do not approach those of intrinsic graphene obtained by mechanical cleaving because the material remains significantly oxidized. The residual oxygen forms sp3 bonds with carbon atoms in the basal plane such that the carbon sp2 bonding fraction in fully reduced GO is ∼0.80. The minority sp3 bonds disrupt the transport of carriers delocalized in the sp2 network, limiting the mobility, and conductivity of reduced GO thin films. Extrapolation of electrical conductivity data as a function of oxygen content reveals that complete removal of oxygen should lead to properties that are comparable to graphene.
Understanding ArtAbility: Using qualitative methods to assess the impact of a multi-genre arts education program on middle-school students with autism and their neurotypical teen mentors

ABSTRACT This article provides both a detailed description of ArtAbility, a multi-genre arts education program designed to meet the unique needs of middle-school students on the autism spectrum; and the results of a qualitative pilot study of the impact of ArtAbility on participants and their neurotypical teen mentors. A few prior studies have attempted to quantify outcomes of arts-based interventions for youth on the autism spectrum—especially drama education programs and music interventions—but our study is one of the first to use qualitative methods to generate a nuanced picture of how and why arts-based interventions can be so beneficial for this population. We argue that qualitative and quantitative approaches should be seen as complementary and mutually reinforcing. Our results validate findings from earlier quantitative studies in terms of the positive social and emotional learning outcomes that appear to accrue from participation in programs like ArtAbility. However, unlike earlier studies, we were also able to identify a number of reasons why ArtAbility was so successful. Chief among them were (1) the seamless interweaving of arts instruction with social and emotional learning instruction—the two combining to build a vibrant (albeit transient) experience of arts community; and (2) the role of neurotypical teen mentors in facilitating participants’ learning experiences in order to help them access program content, participate in multi-genre arts activities, and build meaningful relationships. We also found that effects of the program were bi-directional, and that teen mentors—recruited as volunteer support staff to facilitate learning for participants with autism—were also positively impacted by their experience mentoring participants.
Multiparametric iterative self-organizing MR imaging data analysis technique for assessment of tissue viability in acute cerebral ischemia.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Defining viability and the potential for recovery of ischemic brain tissue can be very valuable for patient selection for acute stroke therapies. Multiparametric MR imaging analysis of ischemic lesions indicates that the ischemic lesion is inhomogeneous in degree of ischemic injury and recovery potential. We sought to define MR imaging characteristics of ischemic lesions that are compatible with viable tissue. METHODS We included patients with supratentorial ischemic stroke who underwent multiparametric MR imaging studies (axial multi-spin-echo T2-weighted imaging, T1-weighted imaging, and diffusion-weighted imaging) at the acute (< 24 hours) and outcome (3 months) phases of stroke. Using the algorithm Iterative Self-Organizing Data Analysis Technique (ISODATA), the lesion was segmented into clusters and each was assigned a number, called the tissue signature (white matter = 1, CSF = 12, all others between these two). Recovery was defined as at least a 20% size reduction from the acute phase ISODATA lesion volume to the outcome phase T2-weighted imaging lesion volume. The tissue signature data were collapsed into the following categories: < or = 3, 4, 5, and > or = 6. Logistic regression analysis included the following parameters: lesion volume, tissue signature value, apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) value, relative ADC (rADC) expressed as a ratio, T2 value, and T2 ratio. The model with the largest goodness of fit value was selected. RESULTS We included 48 patients (female-male ratio, 26:22; age, 64 [+/-14] years; 15 treated with recombinant tissue plasminogen activator [rt-PA] within 3 hours of onset; median National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score, 7 [range, 2-26]). Median symptom onset-to-MR imaging time interval was 9.5 hours. With ISODATA processing, we generated 200 region-of-interest tissue records (one to nine tissue records per patient). Regarding tissue recovery, we detected a three-way interaction among ADC, ISODATA tissue signature, and previous treatment with rt-PA (P = .003). In the group not treated with rt-PA, ischemic tissues with acute rADC greater than the median (0.79) and tissue signature < or = 4 were more likely to recover (80% vs. 31% and 13%, odds ratio [95% CI]: 0.12 [0.05, 0.30] and 0.04 [0.01, 0.18] for tissue signatures 5 and 6, respectively). CONCLUSION ISODATA multiparametric MR imaging of acute stroke clearly shows inhomogeneity and different viability of the ischemic lesion. Ischemic tissues with lower acute phase ISODATA tissue signature values (< or = 4) and higher rADC values (> or = 0.79) are much more likely to recover than those with higher signature values or lower rADC values. The effect of these factors on tissue recovery, however, is dependent on whether preceding treatment with rt-PA had been performed. Our approach can be a valuable tool in the design of therapeutic stroke trials with an extended time window.
Intraarterial thrombolysis for treatment of acute stroke: experience in 26 patients with long-term follow-up.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Since the approval of intravenous tissue plasminogen activator for acute ischemic stroke, great interest has been generated in cerebral fibrinolysis. Our purpose was to assess long-term outcome and hemorrhagic risk in patients with anterior circulation ischemic stroke treated with intraarterial urokinase. METHODS Twenty-six patients were treated within 6 hours of ictus; of these, 21 were followed up for an average of 23 months. Angiographic reperfusion was classified according to thrombolysis in myocardial infarction (TIMI) grades. The Rankin Scale (RS) and the modified Barthel Index (mod BI) were used as outcome measures (good outcome: RS = 0-2, mod BI = 16-20; poor outcome: RS = 3-5, mod BI < or = 15). RESULTS Ten of the 21 patients (average age, 48 years) had a good outcome; three (average age, 71 years) had a poor outcome; eight patients (average age, 78 years) died. Partial/complete (successful) recanalization was observed in 11 of 26 patients and minimal or no (unsuccessful) recanalization in 15. Recanalization favored a better outcome: nine of 21 had successful recanalization, with a good outcome in seven; 12 of 21 had unsuccessful reperfusion, with poor outcome/death in nine. Poor outcome was noted in five patients with internal carotid artery (ICA) bifurcation occlusions, four of whom had unsuccessful recanalization and poor outcome or death. Hemorrhage occurred in 10 of the 26 patients, with clinical deterioration in three. The average dose of urokinase was higher in the hemorrhage group, and mortality was higher in patients who hemorrhaged. CONCLUSION Intraarterial thrombolysis is feasible in the setting of acute stroke. Successful reperfusion is associated with a better outcome, and the prevalence of hemorrhage does not exceed that which occurs in the natural history of embolic stroke. Poor outcome or death is associated with nonrecanalization, older age, hemorrhage, and ICA bifurcation occlusions.
THE POLITICS OF GOVERNING OIL IN UGANDA: GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN?

The capacity and commitment of Uganda to govern its oil in developmental ways has generally been discussed through a new institutionalist prism that focuses on the dangers of the ‘resource curse’. This paper argues that the developmental potential of oil in Uganda can be better understood through a political settlements framework which goes beyond a focus on institutional form to examine how deeper forms of power and politics shape oil governance. Drawing on in-depth primary research, we focus in particular on the extent to which the interplay of interests and ideas within Uganda’s ruling coalition has enabled the government to protect its national interest during negotiations with international oil companies. However, the dynamics of Uganda’s political settlement raise serious doubts as to whether the impressive levels of elite commitment and bureaucratic capacity displayed to date will withstand the intensifying pressures that will accompany the eventual commencement of oil flows.
Do summaries help?

We describe a task-based evaluation to determine whether multi-document summaries measurably improve user performance whe using online news browsing systems for directed research. We evaluated the multi-document summaries generated by Newsblaster, a robust news browsing system that clusters online news articles and summarizes multiple articles on each event. Four groups of subjects were asked to perform the same time-restricted fact-gathering tasks, reading news under different conditions: no summaries at all, single sentence summaries drawn from one of the articles, Newsblaster multi-document summaries, and human summaries. Our results show that, in comparison to source documents only, the quality of reports assembled using Newsblaster summaries was significantly better and user satisfaction was higher with both Newsblaster and human summaries.
The heritage tourist: an understanding of the visitor experience at heritage attractions

Abstract This study seeks to explore the visitor experience at heritage sites pre, during and post visit. A conceptual model depicting the heritage visitor experience was proposed. A self-administered survey (n = 195) was completed by visitors at six heritage sites across Northern Ireland. Visitor characteristics and pre-experience were analysed and results showed that heritage visitors are primarily motivated by recreation and base their visitation decision on advice from friends and family. Results from the exploratory factor analysis showed that audio and visual communication, atmospherics, on-site engagement, information and heritage preservation were the most influential factors during a visit. Post-experience results indicate that 54% of the sample was satisfied with their visit and 85% would revisit the heritage site. The final model suggests a range of factors which positively contribute to the visitor experience at heritage sites though this requires further testing.
MERGER OF BINARY NEUTRON STARS IN FULLY GENERAL RELATIVISTIC SIMULATION

We performed 3D numerical simulations of the merger of equal-mass binary neutron stars in full general relativity using a new large-scale supercomputer. We take the typical grid size as (505, 505, 253) for (x, y, z) and the maximum grid size as (633, 633, 317). These grid numbers enable us to put the outer boundaries of the computational domain near the local wave zone and hence to calculate gravitational waveforms of good accuracy (within ∼ 10% error) for the first time. To model neutron stars, we adopt a Γ -law equation of state in the form P =( Γ − 1)ρe, where P , ρ, e and Γ are the pressure, rest mass density, specific internal energy and adiabatic constant. It is found that gravitational waves in the merger stage have characteristic features that reflect the formed objects. In the case that a massive, transient neutron star is formed, its quasi-periodic oscillations are excited for a long duration, and this property is reflected clearly by the quasi-periodic nature of waveforms and the energy luminosity. In the case of black hole formation, the waveform and energy luminosity are likely damped after a short merger stage. However, a quasi-periodic oscillation can still be seen for a certain duration, because an oscillating transient massive object is formed during the merger. This duration depends strongly on the initial compactness of neutron stars and is reflected in the Fourier spectrum of gravitational waves. To confirm our results and to calibrate the accuracy of gravitational waveforms, we carried out a wide variety of test simulations, changing the resolution and size of the computational domain.
Naxalite Insurgency and the Economic Benefits of a Unique Robust Security Response

Using the synthetic control method of analysis, we provide the first measurements of the direct economic benefits of a unique robust security response to an insurgency. Of all the states affected by Naxalite violence in India, only one state i.e. Andhra Pradesh raised a specially trained and equipped police force in 1989 known as the Greyhounds, dedicated mainly to combating the Naxalite insurgency. Compared to a synthetic control region constructed from states affected by Naxalite violence that did not raise a specially trained anti-Naxalite police force, we find that Andhra Pradesh gained on average 16.11% of its per capita NSDP over the period 1989 to 2000. The effects on the various subsectors of the non-agricultural sector range from approximately 11% to 25%. Placebo tests indicate that all results are significant. Standard difference-in-difference specifications at the state and industry level further corroborate these findings.
The role of Metacognition on effect of Working Memory Capacity on students ' mathematical problem solving

The main objective of this study was to investigate the effects of Working Memory Capacity (WMC) on students' mathematical problem solving while considering different psychological factors. A sample of 256 high school girls students from Tehran (17-18 years old) were tested on (a) Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI), (b) Mathematics Attention Test (MAT), (c) Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (MARS), (d) Digit Span Backward Test (DBT), and (e) a Mathematics Exam. Data of the present study were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics by T-test and Spearman correlation with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Results obtained indicate that metacognition had distinctive and challenging variable than other factors in use of WMC in mathematical problem solving. In other words, the correlation superiority between WMC and mathematical performance was found in group of high metacognition. Moreover, in each group of low/high metacognition, low/high math attention, and low/high math anxiety, the students with high WMC showed better mathematical performance than low WMC ones. The findings of the study are suitable for researchers who interested how different factors influence students’ mathematical problems solving.
Influence of Self-Esteem on Job Satisfaction of Secondary School Teachers in Kenya

This study investigated the influence of self-esteem on job satisfaction of secondary school teachers in Kisii Central Sub-County, Kenya. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Herzberg’s two factor theories informed the present study. The study’s target population comprised all 903 secondary school teachers in Kisii Central Sub County. A sample of 306 was selected by stratified sampling to obtain a sample that was representative from all the categories of secondary schools (National, Extra County, County and Sub-County) followed by stratification according to gender to ensure representativeness. For qualitative data, twelve secondary school principals were purposively selected. The study adopted an Ex Post Facto research design where a mixed method research approach was adopted. Data was collected using a modified Sorensen self-esteem scale, job descriptive index questionnaire and interview schedule. Validity was ensured by the assistance of two supervisors’ judgment while for reliability, Cronbach’s Alpha and was found to be 0.764. Quantitative data was organized using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0 and the data was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Qualitative data was analyzed using Thematic analysis. The correlation analysis established a weak but positive (r =.157; p=.011 < .05) correlation between teacher self-esteem and level of job satisfaction, with higher self-esteem associated with high levels of job satisfaction. Findings of the study recommends that the Teacher Counselors should consider extending their services to the secondary school teachers who seemed to be struggling with low levels of job satisfaction as this also affected their productivity.
Purpose-driven consultancies’ negotiation of organizational tensions

ABSTRACT This article examines the negotiation of organizational tensions by purpose-driven consultancies, for-profit firms also motivated by social change agendas in their implementation of organizational development for corporate clients. Using two case studies – APCom training ethical corporate leaders, and GreenD communicating environmental sustainability programs – we trace how such consultancies negotiate these tensions, and how their underlying purpose might accordingly transform. Our multi-case study suggests two broad tensions related to purpose and impact that are experienced in context-specific ways by the consultancies. Although members sought to frame these tensions in positive ways, as complementary dialectics or contradicting the dominant capitalist system, they were also at risk of devolving into more paradoxical contradictions and even debilitating double binds, without sustained discussion to ‘repurpose’ the firms. We close by discussing theoretical and practical implications for purpose-driven consultancies, given that their pursuit of social change is often at odds with the status quo.
Real-Time Grading Evaluation of Quality of Strokes in Chinese Characters Handwriting

To realize exercises of Chinese character writing under unattended operation, a real-time evaluation technology for quality of strokes of handwritten Chinese characters is proposed. Its advantages lie in the fact that it decomposes the features of handwritten strokes into macrocosmic and microcosmic views. Macrocosmically, it can effectively identify various open clerical errors by inspecting topological constraints of each key point on path of strokes, microcosmically, it trains the relevant parameters by using decision tree and gets different evaluation rules at two grades, "loose" and "strict", so as to provide appropriate guidance for people with different backgrounds who learn Chinese character writing. Based on this technology, we have realized a real-time evaluation engine for Chinese character handwriting, and the experiments show it has played a good helping role in learning writing strokes of Chinese character.
Payback and the Value of Waiting to Invest

Despite being rejected by finance theory, payback continues to be widelyused as a method for evaluating capital investment projects. In situations where investment can be delayed, we show that the value of waiting to invest is an increasing function of payback period. Consequently, the optimal investment policy is equivalent to requiring that a project with positive net-present-value be launched immediately if and only if its payback period is less than a critical value P*.
Using Left-corner Parsing to Encode Universal Structural Constraints in Grammar Induction

Center-embedding is difﬁcult to process and is known as a rare syntactic construction across languages. In this paper we describe a method to incorporate this assumption into the grammar induction tasks by restricting the search space of a model to trees with limited center-embedding. The key idea is the tabulation of left-corner parsing, which captures the degree of center-embedding of a parse via its stack depth. We apply the technique to learning of famous generative model, the dependency model with valence (Klein and Man-ning, 2004). Cross-linguistic experiments on Universal Dependencies show that often our method boosts the performance from the base-line, and competes with the current state-of-the-art model in a number of languages.
The Idiom Principle in English as a Lingua Franca

This paper examines how the “idiom principle” (Sinclair 1991) works in the language use of English as a Lingua Franca speakers. It is hypothesized that the idiom principle that drives word selection in monolinguals may be blocked in the L2 of bilinguals and the “open choice principle” governs instead. In order to investigate the validity of this hypothesis a small corpus of non-native speaker – non-native speaker (lingua franca) communication is examined and compared to a similar study (Kecskes 2007) where the bilingual speakers used their L2 (English). Based on the two studies we can conclude that the “idiom principle” is the most salient guiding mechanism in any language production. But it results in less formulaic language use in L2 than in L1 of bilinguals. This claim basically concurs with the findings of other studies (cf. Bolander 1989; Pawley and Syder 1983; Warga 2008; Weinert 1995) that also talked about the limited use of formulaic language in L2.