Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Global lifetime of elemental mercury against oxidation by atomic bromine in the free troposphere

We calculate the global mean atmospheric lifetime of elemental mercury (Hg0) against oxidation by atomic bromine (Br) in the troposphere by combining recent kinetic data for the Hg‐Br system with modeled global concentrations of tropospheric Br. We obtain a lifetime of 0.5–1.7 years based on the range of kinetic data, implying that oxidation of Hg0 by Br is a major, and possibly dominant, global sink for Hg0. Most of the oxidation takes place in the middle and upper troposphere, where Br concentrations are high and where cold temperatures suppress thermal decomposition of the HgBr intermediate. This oxidation mechanism is consistent with mercury observations, including in particular high gaseous Hg(II) concentrations in Antarctic summer. Better free‐tropospheric measurements of bromine radicals and further kinetic study of the Hg‐Br system are essential to more accurately assess the global importance of Br as an oxidant of atmospheric Hg0.
The Closed-End Fund Discount and Performance Persistence by Elroy Dimson and

We examine the extent to which the discount on closed-end funds can be explained by the quality of a fund’s management. Using a comprehensive sample of British funds, we use Sharpe’s (1992) returns-based style analysis to measure manager quality after adjusting for factor exposure. We find no evidence of performance persistence amongst closed-end funds, and no indication that fund discounts reflect expected managerial performance. We also show that when a fund has high residual risk, its discount is likely to be more extreme.
Psychosocial and environmental factors associated with dog-walking

Dog walking is associated with higher levels of physical activity (PA). However, not all dog owners walk their dog(s) at a level sufficient for health benefits. Therefore, identifying correlates of dog-walking may help to inform the design of more effective interventions to promote this specific form of PA. The purpose of this study was to examine psychosocial and environmental correlates of dog-walking and relationships of dog-walking with overall PA. In 2010, 391 dog owners (mean age = 43.6 ± 12.3 years) completed a survey. Multiple logistic regression and structural equation modeling were used to examine psychosocial and environmental correlates of dog-walking status, weekly minutes of dog-walking, and relationships of dog-walking with overall PA. Self-efficacy for dog-walking, dog-related outcome expectancies, family social support, dog social support, and neighborhood walking environment were associated with a 1.3–5.6 greater odds of being a dog walker. Self-efficacy mediated relationships between family support, dog support, and presence of a yard and dog-walking. Neighborhood environment, including the presence of greenery and trails, was also positively associated with duration of dog-walking (β = 0.17; p < 0.05). Every 30-minute increase in dog-walking was associated with a 23% greater odds of meeting PA guidelines by walking. Individual, social, and environmental factors consistent with a social–ecological framework were positively associated with dog-walking. Individuals were more likely to meet PA guidelines if they walked their dog(s) and engaged in dog-walking for longer duration.
The costs and benefits of working with one's spouse: A two‐sample examination of spousal support, work–family conflict, and emotional exhaustion in work‐linked relationships

Summary Although the prevalence of employees working within the same workplace or occupation with their spouse has increased, relatively little research has examined their experiences. On the basis of the boundary and conservation of resources (COR) theories, we argue that higher levels of work–family role integration among work-linked couples will lead to higher levels of spousal support resources and lower levels of work–family conflict. This will, in turn, lead to lower emotional exhaustion among employees in a work-linked relationship. Among two samples of employees in a variety of occupations, we found that being in a work-linked relationship was associated with both higher spousal instrumental support as well as different forms of work–family conflict. The interaction between spousal support and work–family conflict was associated with emotional exhaustion. We discuss the implications of these findings for boundary and COR theories in terms of movement of resources across work–family boundaries and resource relevance in the strain process. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A comparison of two popular end-to-end congestion control algorithms: the case of AIMD and AIPD

The focus of this paper is to compare two popular end-to-end congestion control algorithm in the literature, namely, AIMD (additive increase/multiplicative decrease) and AIPD (additive increase/loss proportional decrease). We clarify the definitions of AIMD and AIPD algorithms, and compare them in various aspects such as convergence, steady state throughput, fairness characteristics, and the corresponding utility functions. The comparison is based on a simple mathematical analysis and a set of simulation results using the ns-2 simulator.
Peculiarity of 3D Flow Organization in Soret Driven Instability

Abstract Three-dimensional time-dependent numerical calculations are performed in a cubic cell filled with a binary mixture of water (90%) and isopropanol (10%). The system is heated from above while the Soret coefficient (ST ) is negative, i.e., a thermally stable Rayleigh-Benard configuration. Due to the Soret effect, the heavier liquid is accumulated on the top of the lighter one and buoyant convection can be initiated. We report the numerical value of critical solutal Rayleigh number Ras ≈ 16200 at which motion starts in a cubic cell. The flow has a finger (or columnar) structure where the major mass flux is concentrated near the center line. Later in time, this columnar structure diffuses in the horizontal direction. The development of the motion is shown through the evolution of 3D flow patterns. The upward or downward direction of the flow along the center line depends on the applied temperature difference. We attribute the change in direction of the motion to the finite size of the system and to the features of Rayleigh–Benard convection in a cubic cell.
CompaRing: Reducing Costs of Visual Comparison

Comparison is a frequent task when analyzing data. In visualization, comparison tasks are naturally carried out based on a visual representation of the data. Visual comparison allows us to gain insight where plain computations of numerical differences alone cannot grasp the complex interdependencies in the data. Yet, visual comparison also comes at a cost. There are costs when interpreting the visual representation and costs when interactively carrying out the comparison. We present techniques to reduce some of the costs associated with visual comparison. We address cognitive costs for comparing objects that are spread across a visual representation and interaction costs for selecting and navigating between objects to be compared. Our techniques are illustrated by the example of comparing geographic regions in choropleth maps.
Spatial and Social Media Data Analytics of Housing Prices in Shenzhen, China

Housing is among the most pressing issues in urban China and has received considerable scholarly attention. Researchers have primarily concentrated on identifying the factors that influence residential property prices and how such mechanisms function. However, few studies have examined the potential factors that influence housing prices from a big data perspective. In this article, we use a big data perspective to determine the willingness of buyers to pay for various factors. The opinions and geographical preferences of individuals for places can be represented by visit frequencies given different motivations. Check-in data from the social media platform Sina Visitor System is used in this article. Here, we use kernel density estimation (KDE) to analyse the spatial patterns of check-in spots (or places of interest, POIs) and employ the Getis-Ord Gi* method to identify the hot spots for different types of POIs in Shenzhen, China. New indexes are then proposed based on the hot-spot results as measured by check-in data to analyse the effects of these locations on housing prices. This modelling is performed using the hedonic price method (HPM) and the geographically weighted regression (GWR) method. The results show that the degree of clustering of POIs has a significant influence on housing values. Meanwhile, the GWR method has a better interpretive capacity than does the HPM because of the former method’s ability to capture spatial heterogeneity. This article integrates big social media data to expand the scope (new study content) and depth (study scale) of housing price research to an unprecedented degree.
Investigating cognitive and ontological factors underlying the adherence to normative materialistic values and their influence on wellbeing

This thesis comprises three studies which aimed to investigate the cognitive and ontological factors that may contribute to placing importance on intrinsic or extrinsic aspirations, and their indirect relationship with wellbeing due to factors such as regulation and self-esteem. The first study (N = 397) indicated that older respondents and those with an epistemic orientation towards complex (i.e., Intellective Processing) rather than expedient, effortless (i.e., Default Processing) thinking, tended to place more importance on intrinsic compared to extrinsic aspirations, were less materialistic, more autonomous in their regulation, resulting in greater self-esteem and wellbeing. The second study (N = 231) commenced an exploration into holistic (i.e., a perspective which considers all things as being related, dynamic, and defined by context) and mechanistic (i.e., an atomistic perspective which sees things as being separate and static, emphasising external, quantifiable outcomes) ontological perspectives. In addition to increased age and a focus on Intellective Processing, higher levels of holism were associated with increased nonattachment (i.e., accepting the flow of events in life without judgement), placing more importance on intrinsic than extrinsic aspirations, reduced materialism, and greater autonomous regulation, self-esteem, self-actualization, and wellbeing. The third study (n = 302, n = 142, n = 154) aimed to further investigate holistic and mechanistic thinking. Retrospective accounts of one’s parents as being authoritarian were associated with reduced holism (i.e., greater mechanism), leading to a greater focus on extrinsic aspirations, controlled regulation, lower self-esteem, and reduced wellbeing. Authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative parenting styles were directly associated with placing more importance on extrinsic than intrinsic aspirations, suggesting that within a consumer culture, all parenting styles may promote a focus on extrinsic aspirations. Higher levels of holism however, were indirectly associated with greater wellbeing due to placing more importance on intrinsic compared to extrinsic aspiriatons, leading to greater levels of autonomous regulation, and subsequently higher levels of self-esteem and wellbeing. Overall,
The role of gene–environment interaction in the aetiology of human cancer: examples from cancers of the large bowel, lung and breast

Abstract. Mucci LA, Wedren S, Tamimi RM, Trichopoulos D, Adami H. ‐O. (Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA; and Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden) The role of gene–environment interaction in the aetiology of human cancer: examples from cancers of the large bowel, lung and breast. J Intern Med 2001; 249: 477–493.
The Nakivale Camp Mental Health Project: building local competency for psychological assistance to traumatised refugees

Little is known about the usefulness of psychiatric concepts and psychotherapeutic approaches for refugees who have experienced severe traumatic events and continue to live in stressful and potentially dangerous conditions in refugee settlements. The central goal of the Nakivale Camp Mental Health Project is to establish the usefulness of short-term treatment approaches when applied by local paramedical personnel in a disaster region. In a randomized controlled clinical trial, the efficacy of Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) vis-√†-vis Supportive Counselling has been tested, when applied by trained paramedical personnel from within the same refugee community. Here we demonstrate the feasibility of such an approach and detail the methods and strategy for it. The project also included an epidemiological survey to ascertain the prevalence of PTSD among refugee adolescents and adults alike. Consistent with other investigations, the demographic survey revealed a high prevalence of chronic PTSD ranging from 31.1% in the Rwandan to 47% in the Somali population; even though traumatic events had on average taken place more than 9 and 11 years earlier in each case respectively. Diagnostic validity was assured using expert clinical interviews. The significant social and work-related dysfunction, a disabling consequence of PTSD, does not only impact on the life of the affected individual. Communities where a significant percentage of members, are psychologically affected by past human rights violations, atrocities and war, are held back in their recovery process at many levels. Therefore mental health programmes with workable guidelines on how to treat posttraumatic symptoms, based on solid scientific research with proven effectiveness and feasibility, in particular cultural settings, must become a humanitarian priority. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved) (from the journal abstract)
Service-learning and diversity: The relationship of race, gender, and prior service experience to students' self-perceived appreciation of difference and awareness of structural inequality

This thesis explored the relationship between students’ participation in a onesemester service-learning course and their self-perceptions of diversity, defined as appreciation of difference and awareness of structural inequality (O’Grady, 2000). Specifically, the study explicated the relationship between each of the two diversity components and race, gender, service hours required, and prior service participation. The study utilized existing data from the Curricular Service Learning Survey, a locally developed instrument. Results indicated that women’s perceptions of appreciation of difference were significantly greater than men’s perceptions, whereas students’ perceptions of awareness of structural inequality differed significantly by race and gender. Blocked hierarchical regressions revealed that students’ prior service experience and high school service requirement predicted a significant but small amount of the variance (6%) in their
Gender Differences in Risk Factors for Single and Recurrent Falls Among the Community-Dwelling Elderly:

The purpose of this study was to identify gender differences in risk factors of fall accidents among older people, and whether these factors differ between single and recurrent fallers. A total of 4,426 individuals aged ≥65 years from two large-scale health surveys provided data. Logistic regression analyses were used to identify risk factors and to determine the risk model for falling and recurrent falling in men and women separately. Three major risk factors for falling regardless of gender or fall history are fear of falling, limitations in activities of daily living (ADL), and age ≥75 years. Fear of falling remains one of the common modifiable risk factors. Among those without a fall history, the use of sedatives or tranquilizers increases the risk of falling. Regarding gender differences, ADL limitations and fear of falling appear to be stronger fall risk factors for men than for women. Among women, alcohol use and educational level are significant risk factors for falling, while loneliness is associ.
Nematode Homologue of PQBP1, a Mental Retardation Causative Gene, Is Involved in Lipid Metabolism

Background PQBP1 is a causative gene for X-linked mental retardation (MR) whose patients frequently show lean body. C. elegans has a strictly conserved homologue gene of PQBP1, T21D12.3. Methodology and Principal Findings We generated Venus-transgenic and T21D12.3-mutant nematodes to analyze developmental expression patterns and in vivo functions of the nematode PQBP1 homologue protein (pqbp-1.1). During development, pqbp-1.1 is expressed from cell proliferation stage to larva stage. In larva, intestinal cells show the highest expression of pqbp-1.1, while it decreases in adult worms. The mutants of pqbp-1.1 show a decrease of the lipid content in intestinal cells. Especially, incorporation of fatty acid into triglyceride is impaired. ShRNA-mediated repression of PQBP1 also leads to reduction of lipid content in mammalian primary white adipocytes. Conclusion/ Significance These results suggest that pqbp-1.1 is involved in lipid metabolism of intestinal cells. Dysfunction of lipid metabolism might underlie lean body, one of the most frequent symptoms associating with PQBP1-linked MR patients.
BoostFM: Boosted Factorization Machines for Top-N Feature-based Recommendation

Feature-based matrix factorization techniques such as Factorization Machines (FM) have been proven to achieve impressive accuracy for the rating prediction task. However, most common recommendation scenarios are formulated as a top-N item ranking problem with implicit feedback (e.g., clicks, purchases)rather than explicit ratings. To address this problem, with both implicit feedback and feature information, we propose a feature-based collaborative boosting recommender called BoostFM, which integrates boosting into factorization models during the process of item ranking. Specifically, BoostFM is an adaptive boosting framework that linearly combines multiple homogeneous component recommenders, which are repeatedly constructed on the basis of the individual FM model by a re-weighting scheme. Two ways are proposed to efficiently train the component recommenders from the perspectives of both pairwise and listwise Learning-to-Rank (L2R). The properties of our proposed method are empirically studied on three real-world datasets. The experimental results show that BoostFM outperforms a number of state-of-the-art approaches for top-N recommendation.
Larvicidal Activity of Citrus Limonoids against Aedes albopictus Larvae

Background: Development of insecticide resistance occurred due to the continuous and misuse of synthetic insecticides therefore, the recent study was conducted to explore eco-friendly plant extracts that have some potential to suppress mosquito larval population. Methods: WHO recommended mosquito larval bioassay method for insecticide was used while for the analysis of citrus oils for limonin and nomilin content HPLC was used. Results: Among the two citrus cultivars tested as larvicide against Aedes albopictus, valencia late (Citrus sinensis) was the best in terms of LC50 (297 ppm), % mortality (97%) and LT50 (18.49 hours) then freutrall early (Citrus reticulate) with LC50 (377.4 ppm), % mortality (88%) and LT50 (31 hours), While nomilin gave lowest LC50 (121.04 ppm) than limonin (382.22 ppm) after 72 hours of exposure. Valencia late also had more limonin and nomilin (377 μg/ml and 21.19 μg/ml) than freutrall early (5.29 μg/ml and 3.89 μg/ml) respectively. Conclusion: Valencia late showed best results in term of LC50, LT50 and percentage mortality against Aedes albopictus as it has more amount of nomilin then freutrall early, however further evaluation in the field conditions is required.
Intermittent Ethanol during Adolescence Leads to Lasting Behavioral Changes in Adulthood and Alters Gene Expression and Histone Methylation in the PFC

Adolescents primarily consume alcohol in binges, which can be particularly harmful to the developing frontal cortex and increase risk for an adult alcohol use disorder. We conducted a study investigating immediate and long lasting changes to the prefrontal cortex (PFC) transcriptome to determine the molecular mechanisms underlying adult ethanol behavioral sensitivity following binge ethanol in adolescence. DBA/2J mice were orally dosed with 4 g/kg ethanol intermittently from day 29 to 42. Adolescent mice were tested for anxiety-like behavior and ethanol sensitivity using the loss of righting reflex task. As adults, mice were tested for cognitive changes using the novel object recognition task, ethanol-induced anxiolysis and ethanol sensitivity. Adolescent binge ethanol altered ethanol sensitivity in young mice and led to lasting memory deficits in the object recognition test and greater ethanol sensitivity in adulthood. Using genomic profiling of transcripts in the PFC, we found that binge ethanol reduced myelin-related gene expression and altered chromatin modifying genes involved in histone demethylation at H3K9 and H3K36. We hypothesize that ethanol’s actions on histone methylation may be a switch for future transcriptional changes that underlie the behavioral changes lasting into adulthood.
Blood vessels segmentation in retina: preliminary assessment of the mathematical morphology and of the wavelet transform techniques

The article reports on the development of a system for automatic analysis of retinal angiographic images. Particularly, we focus on the segmentation of the blood vessels in these images. We started by implementing a previously known technique based on mathematical morphology. Due to some shortcomings of this method for our data, we have developed a new approach based on the continuous wavelet transform using the Morlet wavelet. The main advantage of the latter with respect to our images lies in its capabilities in tuning to specific frequencies, thus allowing noise filtering and blood vessel enhancement in a single step. Furthermore, as we intend to use shape analysis techniques for the detection and quantitative characterisation of the vascular branching pattern in the retina, the wavelets will also be important with respect to performing fractal and multifractal image analysis. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning that the mathematical morphology method was able to detect finer detail more precisely. Our present results suggest that an interesting direction to be investigated is how to use both approaches together in order to obtain better results and apply this as a diagnostic tool.
From Very Weak to Very Strong: Analyzing Password-Strength Meters

Millions of users are exposed to password-strength meters/checkers at highly popular web services that use user- chosen passwords for authentication. Recent studies have found evidence that some meters actually guide users to choose better passwords—which is a fairly rare-bit of good news in password research. However, these meters are mostly based on ad-hoc design. At least, as we found, most vendors do not provide any explanation of their design choices, sometimes making them appear to be a black box. We analyze password meters deployed in selected popular websites, by measuring the strength labels assigned to common passwords from several password dictionaries. From this empirical analysis with millions of passwords, we report prominent characteristics of meters as deployed at popular websites. We shed light on how the server-end of some meters functions, provide examples of highly inconsistent strength outcomes for the same password in different meters, along with examples of many weak passwords being labeled as strong or even very strong. These weaknesses and inconsistencies may confuse users in choosing a stronger password, and thus may weaken the purpose of these meters. On the other hand, we believe these findings may help improve existing meters, and possibly make them an effective tool in the long run.