Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Revisiting Mediation in the Social and Behavioral Sciences

The process of mediation is of critical importance to the social and behavioral sciences and to evolutionary social psychology in particular. As with the concept of evolutionary adaptation, however, one can argue that causal mediation is in need of explicit theoretical justification and empirical support. Mainstream evolutionary social psychology proposes, for example, that organisms are “adaptation executers”, and not “fitness maximizers”. The execution of adaptations is triggered by fitness-relevant ecological contingencies at both ultimate and proximate levels of analysis. This logic is essentially equivalent to what methodologists refer to as the process of mediation; the adaptations to be executed (or not, depending upon the prevailing environmental circumstances) causally mediate the effects of the ecological contingencies upon the fitness outcomes. Thus, the process of mediation can be generally conceptualized as a causal chain of events leading to a given outcome or set of outcomes. If a predictor variable operates through an intervening variable to affect a criterion variable, then mediation is said to exist. Nevertheless, it does not appear that some psychologists (particularly evolutionary-social psychologists) are sufficiently well-versed in the fundamental logic and quantitative methodology of establishing causal mediation to support such claims. In the current paper, we set out to review the ways researchers support their use of mediation statements and also propose critical considerations on this front. We start with more conventional methods for testing mediation, discuss variants of the conventional approach, discuss the limitations of such methods as we see them, and end with our preferred mediation approach. DOI:10.2458/azu_jmmss_v04i1_figueredo3
Impact of Methadone Maintenance Treatment on the Quality of Life of Opioid Dependent Patients in City of Babol

Background and purpose: Drug abuse is a catastrophe for abusers, their families and the society. Increasing trends of opioid dependence has raised the concern of authorities and is considered as an important public health problem. Many developed countries use pharmacological treatments for opioid dependence, however, this is not accepted in many developing countries. Methadone maintenance treatment is one of the most frequently used methods to treat such patients. This study aimes at investigating the impact of MMT on the quality of life of patients under treatment. Materials and methods: In a quasi-experimental study, 203 opioid dependent under MMT program were studied in Omid treatment centre in Babol. EQ-5D questionnaire was used to evaluate the quality of life of patients before treatment, one and six month after treatment and then comparisons were made. Some information was also collected from the patient's treatment record. All data were analyzed using SPSS. Results: Based on the findings of this study, among 5 dimensions of quality of life, the results showed that the health statues of individuals on two of them (pain/discomfort and anxiety/depression) were lower than the other dimensions. Methadone therapy significantly improved the quality of life of patients and this improvement was considerable at the end of first month. Conclusion: Pharmacological treatment and use of methadone therapy could be a useful method to treat opioid dependence in Iran. Furthermore, it could significantly improve the patients' quality of life.
Acute Effect of Chromium Toxicity on the Behavioral Response of Zebra Fish Danio Rerio

In aquatic ecosystems, domestic wastes as well as industrial effluents of heavy metal contaminants stand for predominant chemical form of the metal. Chromium is highly toxic to both aquatic and soil environment. Aim of the present study was to determine acute effect of chromium trivalent (Cr- III) and hexavalent (Cr-VI) toxicity on the behavioral response of zebra fish Danio rerio. The 96 hours LC50 of chromium trivalent and hexavalent was determined to be 105.279 mg/l and 26.03 mg/l by experimental fishes were exposed in different concentrations. Jerky movements, secretion of mucus, opening mouth for gasping, normal color change, erratic swimming, color turns were observed. Consequently fish moved to the corners of the experimental trough then loss of equilibrium followed by hanging vertically in water became death. The behavior showed that acute chromium toxicity is severely affects the fundamental organs and behavior which is harmful to fishes in aquatic ecosystem. There is need to control the usage of chromium especially Cr-VI because of its observed toxicity level.
THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL NETWORK AND SELF-MONITORING ON CAREER

This study aims to explore individual differences (gender and self-monitoring) and social network patterns of professionals, in order to explain barriers on women striving to ascend to the top of organizations, since a self-monitoring personality and social networks have both been found to affect performance evaluation, promotions and career in organizations. The results showed that males in management positions displayed the same network pattern, whereas females had different networks patterns, depending on their self-monitoring. Furthermore, social network differences were enhanced regarding low self-monitor males and females. High self-monitors males in gender homophilic networks were the ones more related to higher positions in the organization’s hierarchy. The contribution of these findings are discussed, with suggestions for future research
Application of Remote Sensing Technique and Geographic Information Science for Flood Risk Mapping-A Case Study of the Offinso District, Kumasi-Ghana

Flood disasters have become a menace affecting the socio-economic, environmental, health and safety of the people living within the offinso district of Ghana-Kumasi. Monitoring and mapping out flood prone areas, assessing the extent of coverage is thus not in existence and this has been a problem for the government and the entire emergency agencies. However, this literature uses remote sensing and GIS as an emerging tool within the African Region to address and improve the efficiency of flood monitoring, and mapping with reference to offinso District. A Landsat ETM+ Remote Sensing Data of 2015 acquired through the GLOVIS website at the time of flooding to make a flood risk map with the help of GIS analysis tools and a generated DEM which shows the topography and elevation of the district.
Bank Loan Loss Provisions Research: A Review

We review several observations in the bank loan loss provisioning literature to identify and discuss several advances in the literature and to suggest possible directions for future research in the literature. We address several issues including the ethical dimensions of income smoothing, motivations and constrains to income smoothing, methodological issues in the bank loan loss provisions literature and the dynamic loan loss provisioning experiment. We identify some challenges in the literature and proffer directions for future research.
Firm Heterogeneity Under Financial Imperfection: Impacts of Trade and Capital Movement

The paper examines the impacts of trade and capital movement between North and South, which differ in the quality of financial institution, on the productivity distribution and other characteristics of a financially-dependent industry. We find that financial imperfection causes firm heterogeneity and that trade and capital movement are complements in the sense that trade in goods affects the productivity distribution only when accompanied by international capital movement (trade induces capital outflow from South when capital has been internationally mobile). We also find that an international difference in financial development induces reciprocal foreign direct investment.
Joint Multiple Testing Procedures for Graphical Model Selection with Applications to Biological Networks

Gaussian graphical models have become popular tools for identifying relationships between genes when analyzing microarray expression data. In the classical undirected Gaussian graphical model setting, conditional independence relationships can be inferred from partial correlations obtained from the concentration matrix (= inverse covariance matrix) when the sample size n exceeds the number of parameters p which need to estimated. In situations where n < p, another approach to graphical model estimation may rely on calculating unconditional (zeroorder) and first-order partial correlations. In these settings, the goal is to identify a lower-order conditional independence graph, sometimes referred to as a ‘0-1 graphs’. For either choice of graph, model selection may involve a multiple testing problem, in which edges in a graph are drawn only after rejecting hypotheses involving (saturated or lower-order) partial correlation parameters. Most multiple testing procedures applied in previously proposed graphical model selection algorithms rely on standard, marginal testing methods which do not take into account the joint distribution of the test statistics derived from (partial) correlations. We propose and implement a multiple testing framework useful when testing for edge inclusion during graphical model selection. Two features of our methodology include (i) a computationally efficient and asymptotically valid test statistics joint null distribution derived from influence curves for correlation-based parameters, and (ii) the application of empirical Bayes joint multiple testing procedures which can effectively control a variety of popular Type I error rates by incorporating joint null distributions such as those described here (Dudoit and van der Laan, 2008). Using a dataset from Arabidopsis thaliana, we observe that the use of more sophisticated, modular approaches to multiple testing allows one to identify greater numbers of edges when approximating an undirected graphical model using a 0-1 graph. Our framework may also be extended to edge testing algorithms for other types of graphical models (e.g., for classical undirected, bidirected, and directed acyclic graphs).
Will sequence SNP data improve the accuracy of genomic prediction in the presence of long term selection

To date genomic prediction (GP) of breeding values in cattle generally exploits either ~50K or ~800K SNP chips. Now that whole genome sequence data is also available, it is important to evaluate its potential to improve the accuracy of GP. SNP chips include only more common SNP while sequence data includes rare and common SNP as well as all causal mutations (QTL). It is expected that sequence data will improve accuracy of GP particularly if QTL are rare because they have been under long-term negative selection. This study evaluates accuracy of GP using sequence data compared with the equivalent of ~800K or ~50K SNP densities. Accuracy of GP was tested in simulated populations (mimicking Holstein cattle) with and without long-term negative selection acting on QTL. GP was implemented with both BLUP (GBLUP) and Bayesian (BayesR) methods. There was not a very marked difference between GP accuracy in scenarios with neutral QTL or selected QTL because the recent low effective population size (Ne) of cattle decreased the proportion of rare causal mutations compared to expectations in larger Ne. Only the BayesR method was able to exploit an advantage from sequence data. We conclude that combining data from more than one breed in training (reference) populations and using Bayesian analyses, will take better advantage of sequence data for GP than using single breed and GBLUP analyses.
Towards inclusive and resilient regional labour markets: challenges for research and policy

Unemployment and inactivity remain among the largest social and economic problems in society, especially in the context of structural developments, such as sectorial shifts in employment structures and globalization, coupled with robotization and automation, that question future job growth. These employmentrelated issues vary by region, and between urban and rural areas, due to differences in economic structures and location factors, and in the quantity and quality of the labour force which is to an extent related to aging and processes of spatial sorting. Science and policy, particularly where related to economics and geography, are developing alongside two perspectives that dominate labour market research: the economic investment perspective and the social compensation and activation perspective. This paper discusses specific challenges facing research and policy and offers three recommendations that aim to stimulate inclusiveness in regional labour markets: the necessity of a place-based approach, the need for fundamental changes concerning the concept of labour and enhancing effective regional governance.
A local large sieve inequality for cusp forms

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Transitional Politics: Emerging Incentive-Based Instruments in Environmental Regulation

In the past 15 years, incentive-based environmental policy instruments, such as pollution taxes and tradeable pollution permits, have become an important supplement to tradition command-and-control instruments in Europe and the U.S. This paper proposes a positive theory of environmental instrument choice that can be used to explain this trend. We imagine a democratic society that seeks to lower the level of pollution from industrial production to a pre-specified target. The target can be implemented by one of three instruments: [Q]: quantity controls; [P]: tradeable permits; and [T]: pollution taxes. We characterize political equilibrium as an evolving policy compromise between special-interests, representing polluters, and the electorate. We identify three factors that play a key role in explaining the recent trend in instrument choice: increasingly ambitious environmental targets, learning-by-doing driven reductions in transaction costs associated with permit trading, and (abatement) cost-reducing technological progress.
Forecasting Residual Link Lifetime in MANET

We have studied the estimation of residual link lifetime (RLL) in mobile Adhoc networks (MANETs) using the distances between the links of nodes. First of all, we need to demonstarte that to compute uniquely the RLL; at least four distance measurements are required. We also revealed that random measurement errors are the dominant factor in prediction in accuracy and that systematic errors are always negligible. We then suggested a mobile projected trajectory (MPT) algorithm that estimates the correlative path between two nodes from periodical measurements of the distances between nodes.
Analysis of the Selected Characteristics Changes of Cement Composites Exposed to the Sulphate Environment

Many chemicals associated with manure are identified as having a detrimental effect on concrete. The major problem, however, is the effect of hydrogen sulphide and its derivatives, which leads to sulphuric acid corrosion. Sulphuric acid corrosion can be caused due to attack of aggressive media naturally existing in environment. Another possibility of corrosion formation is biogenic acid effect through the agency of microorganisms. The corrosion resistance of concrete depends on the type and chemical composition of the cement as well as the pH of the attacking acid. The paper is focused on the study of chemical corrosion of concrete samples resulting in increased leaching due to sulphate environment. Sulphate aggressive environment was represented by 0.5 % solution of H2SO4 (pH value of 0.99) and 0.5 % Al2(SO4)3 solution (sulphate concentration of 3,000 mg/L). Distilled water used as reference medium as proper leaching simulation environment. Concrete composites with/without coal fly ash cement replacement were used for the experiments. The laboratory experiments proceeded during the 60 days. No significant differences in chemical composition of concrete samples before and after the experiment were observed except for the iron, aluminum and silicon concentrations. Summarizing the results of chemical composition of the liquid media before and after the experiments, the initial concentrations of Ca in leachates have been increased 2.0 to 3.5, 16.4 to 18.3 and 4.1 to 5.1 times for distilled water, sulphuric acid and aluminum sulphate, respectively. In point of view of calcium leaching, the concrete sample with fly ash was confirmed to be more resistant to sulphuric acid in comparison to the sample without fly ash. The initial concentrations of Si have been increased 1.9 to 1.91, 3.2 to 3.3 and 1.89 to 1.92 times for distilled water, sulphuric acid and aluminum sulphate, respectively. In case of all liquid media the increasing character of pH values have been noticed. The most visible increase of pH value to the alkali region was observed in case of distilled water (more than 1.8 times for both types of composites).
Forest Floor Carbon Exchange of a Boreal Black Spruce Forest in Eastern Canada

Forest Floor Carbon Exchange of a Boreal Black Spruce Forest in Eastern Canada O. Bergeron, H. A. Margolis, and C. Coursolle Centre d’étude de la forêt, Faculté de foresterie, de géographie et de géomatique, Université Laval, Québec, Canada now at: Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada Received: 14 April 2009 – Accepted: 14 May 2009 – Published: 5 June 2009 Correspondence to: O. Bergeron (onil.bergeron@mcgill.ca) Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union.
Stock Market Development and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence for Emerging Market Economies

Contemporary economies of developing countries are changing due to rapid changes in the world economy. The economies of emerging market countries are witnessing changes in the composition of capital flows because world stock markets are expanding rapidly. Foreign direct investment and stock market boom are the indicators of the changing world economic order. The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between stock market development and economic Growth. Empirically, based on the data for 17 emerging market and 10 developed market economies during the 12 years’ period, from 2000 - 2011 using the generalized method of momentum (GMM) for dynamic panel data. To control for the country specific effect, the model is further estimated for the developed and emerging member economies. The key findings of the study reveal that there exists statistically significant relationship between stock market development and economic growth both directly, as well as indirectly by boosting investment behavior. The results also indicate robustly that stock market development is an important wheel for economic growth
Formation and evolution mechanism of regional haze : a case study in the megacity Beijing , China

The main objective of this study is to investigate the formation and evolution mechanism of the regional haze in megacity Beijing by analyzing the process of a severe haze that occurred 20–27 September 2011. Mass concentration and size distribution of aerosol particles as well as aerosol optical properties were concurrently measured at the Beijing urban atmospheric environment monitoring station. Gaseous pollutants (SO 2, NO-NO2-NOx, O3, CO) and meteorological parameters (wind speed, wind direction, and relative humidity) were simultaneously monitored. Meanwhile, aerosol spatial distribution and the height of planetary boundary layer (PBL) were retrieved from the signal of satellite and LIDAR (light detection and ranging). Concentrations of NO, NO2, SO2, O3, and CO observed during 23–27 September had exceeded the national ambient air quality standards for residents. The mass concentration of PM 2.5 gradually accumulated during the measurement and reached at 220 μg m −3 on 26 September, and the corresponding atmospheric visibility was only 1.1 km. The daily averaged AOD in Beijing increased from∼ 0.16 atλ = 500 nm on 22 September and reached∼ 3.5 on 26 September. The key factors that affected the formation and evolution of this haze episode were stable anti-cyclone synoptic conditions at the surface, decreasing of the height of PBL, heavy pollution emissions from urban area, number and size evolution of aerosols, and hygroscopic growth for aerosol scattering. This c se study may provide valuable information for the public to recognize the formation mechanism of the regional haze event over the megacity, which is also useful for the government to adopt scientific approach to forecast and eliminate the occurrence of regional haze in China.
Donor-acceptor pair luminescence of nitrogen-implanted ZnO single crystal

Donor-acceptor-pair sDAPd luminescence is a direct probe of the acceptors in ZnO. We report the near-surface doping of a ZnO single crystal by ion implantation with nitrogen and titanium. Secondary-ion-mass spectroscopy shows that the doping depth is approximately 80 nm sNd and 50 nm sTid. The DAP photoluminescence centered at 3.232 eV is observed from both the undoped and doped ZnO single-crystal samples. The luminescence spectrum of the nitrogen-doped sample shows enhancement of the DAP transition compared to the “pure” ZnO sample. The acceptor energy is calculated to be 177 meV, consistent with nitrogen as the acceptor in DAP luminescence. The DAP recombination lifetime is found to be ,5.5 ns. The temperature evolution of spectra shows the gradual transition from DAP luminescence to electron+ acceptor recombination luminescence at temperatures above 37 K. Our experimental results suggest that ion implantation is an effective way of doping nitrogen into ZnO. © 2005 American Institute of Physics . fDOI: 10.1063/1.1854208g
A Soft Decision Feedback Equalizer

In this paper, a method to reduce the error propagation in Decision Feedback Equalizers (DFEs) is addressed. An M -level staircase nonlinearity is proposed for the feedback chain of the DFE. Analytical results are presented to show advantages obtained with increasing M . Finally, the saturation nonlinearity (the limiting case as M tends to in nity) is suggested for the DFE. Simulations are provided to support the proposed DFE. Its performance is found to be better than that of the recently proposed Erasure DFE.
Corporate Governance Attributes and Financial Reporting Quality: Empirical Evidence from Iran

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of corporate governance attributes on financial reporting quality in firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) during the period of 2003 to 2011. In this study McNichols (2002) and Collins and Kothari (1989) are used for financial reporting quality measurement purpose, and institutional ownership, ownership concentration, board independence and board size is considered as corporate governance attributes. The results of the study show that there is no relationship between corporate governance attributes including board size, board independence, ownership concentration, institutional ownership and financial reporting quality. In addition, no evidence is found to support significant relationship between control variables (audit size, firm size and firm age) and financial reporting quality.