Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Potential Greenhouse Gas Emissions Associated with Shale Gas Extraction and Use

Executive Summary 1. In December 2012, the Secretary of State for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) requested a study to gather available evidence on the potential greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from production of shale gas in the UK, and the compatibility of future production and use of shale gas in the UK with climate change targets. This report presents the outcome of this study and provides recommendations to mitigate the climate change impacts of shale gas exploration, production and use in the UK. 2. This study examines local GHG emissions associated with shale gas exploration and production. The carbon footprint includes carbon dioxide (CO 2) and methane (CH 4). Methane has a global warming potential 25 times greater than CO 2 , based on a 100-year time horizon 1. It also studies the effect of shale gas use on overall GHG emissions rates and cumulative emissions. 3. Comparisons are made between the emissions associated with the use of shale gas, conventional gas, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), and coal. 4. Our conclusions are as follows: Carbon footprint a. If adequately regulated, local GHG emissions from shale gas operations should represent only a small proportion of the total carbon footprint of shale gas, which is likely to be dominated by CO 2 emissions associated with its combustion. b. Any local GHG emissions from shale gas operations would fall within the non-traded sector of the UK's carbon budgets. If the carbon budgets impose a binding constraint, any increase in emissions associated with domestic shale gas operations would have to be offset by emissions cuts elsewhere in the economy. c. The carbon footprint (emissions intensity) of shale gas extraction and use is likely to be in the range 200 – 253 g CO 2 e per kWh of chemical energy, which makes shale gas's overall carbon footprint comparable to gas extracted from conventional sources (199 – 207 g CO 2 e/kWh (th)), and lower than the carbon footprint of Liquefied Natural Gas (233-270g CO 2 e/kWh (th)). When shale gas is used for electricity generation, its carbon footprint is likely to be in the range 423 – 535 g CO 2 e/kWh (e) , which is significantly lower than the carbon footprint of coal, 837 – 1130 g CO 2 e/kWh (e) .
Revolution from Above in English Schools: Neoliberalism, the Democratic Commons and Education

The ideas of the New Left and the recently emerged alter-globalisation movements are marginal within current policy debates concerning the English education system. Here I seek to demonstrate the interconnections between the New Left and the alter-globalisation movement and suggest that these ideas contain a powerful corrective to the increasingly authoritarian present. The next part of the article considers the development of neoliberalism both in a theoretical context and since the arrival of the new Conservative–Liberal government in the UK. Here I outline the rapid transformation of English schools under the academies programme and look at how it has been explicitly linked to ideas of ‘moral collapse’ evident in the popular discourse of ‘Broken Britain’. Especially significant in this respect has been the labelling of comprehensive schools as ‘failures’ and the explicit imposition of more authoritarian understandings of pedagogy. I seek to explore both the rapidity of this transformation in the context of the dissatisfaction with the idea of comprehensive schools shown by the political Right and the Third Way’s reworking of socialism. Finally I briefly consider more progressive alternatives for schools and education by returning to the idea of the democratic commons. In this respect, the cultural Left needs to explore more radical alternatives beyond the defence of comprehensive schooling which sounds both nostalgic and misplaced within our global times.
Modelling client satisfaction levels: the impact of contractor performance

The performance of contractors is known to be a key determinant of client satisfaction.Here, using factor analysis, clients’ satisfaction is defined in several dimensions. Based onclients’ assessment of contractor performance, a number of satisfaction models developedusing the multiple regression (MR) technique are presented. The models identify arange of variables encompassing contractor performance, project performance and respondent(i.e. client) attributes as useful predictors of satisfaction levels. Contractor performanceattributes were found to be of utmost importance indicating that clientsatisfaction levels are mainly dependent on the performance of the contractor. Furthermore,findings suggest that subjectivity is to some extent prevalent in clients’ performanceassessment. The models demonstrate accurate and reliable predictive power as confirmedby validation tests. Contractors could use the models to help improve their performanceleading to more satisfied clients. This would also promote the development ofharmonious working relationships within the construction project coalition.
Developing Countries: The Impact of Bilateral Investment Treaties

The effects of Bilateral Investment Treaties on FDI and the domestic business environment remain unexplored despite the proliferation of treaties over the past several years. This paper explores the objectives and possible consequences of BITs. Specifically, it asks whether BITs stimulate FDI flows to host countries, and if this relationship is conditional on the level of political risk in a country. We find a very weak relationship between BITs and FDI. Further, we find that rather than encouraging greater FDI in riskier environments, BITs only have a positive effect on FDI flows in countries with an already stable business environment. Overall, BITs seem to have little positive effect either on foreign investment or on outside investors’ perception of the investment environment in lowand middle-income countries.
Dynamic Effects of Social Influence and Direct Marketing on the Adoption of High-Technology Products

Many firms capitalize on their customers’ social networks to improve the success rate of their new products. In this article, the authors analyze the dynamic effects of social influence and direct marketing on the adoption of a new high-technology product. Social influence is likely to play a role because the decision to adopt a high-involvement product requires extensive information gathering from various sources. The authors use call detail records to construct ego networks for a large sample of customers of a Dutch mobile telecommunications operator. Using a fractional polynomial hazard approach to model adoption timing and multiple social influence variables, they provide a fine-grained analysis of social influence. They show that the effect of social influence from cumulative adoptions in a customer's network decreases from the product introduction onward, whereas the influence of recent adoptions remains constant. The effect of direct marketing is also positive and decreases from the product introduction onward. This study provides new insights into the adoption of high-technology products by analyzing dynamic effects of social influence and direct marketing simultaneously.
Estimating the number of Reeb chords using a linear representation of the characteristic algebra

Given a chord-generic horizontally displaceable Legendrian submanifold $\Lambda\subset P\times \mathbb R$ with the property that its characteristic algebra admits a finite-dimensional matrix representation, we prove an Arnold-type lower bound for the number of Reeb chords on $\Lambda$. This result is a generalization of the results of Ekholm-Etnyre-Sullivan and Ekholm-Etnyre-Sabloff which hold for Legendrian submanifolds whose Chekanov-Eliashberg algebras admit augmentations. We also provide examples of Legendrian submanifolds $\Lambda$ of $\mathbb C^{n}\times \mathbb R$, $n \ge 1$, whose characteristic algebras admit finite-dimensional matrix representations, but whose Chekanov-Eliashberg algebras do not admit augmentations. In addition, to show the limits of the method of proof for the bound, we construct a Legendrian submanifold $\Lambda\subset \mathbb C^{n}\times \mathbb R$ with the property that the characteristic algebra of $\Lambda$ does not satisfy the rank property. Finally, in the case when a Legendrian submanifold $\Lambda$ has a non-acyclic Chekanov-Eliashberg algebra, using rather elementary algebraic techniques we obtain lower bounds for the number of Reeb chords of $\Lambda$. These bounds are slightly better than the number of Reeb chords that is possible to achieve with a Legendrian submanifold whose Chekanov-Eliashberg algebra is acyclic.
Updating on Housing Wealth and Consumption in Sweden

Using the most recent data from 1996 to 2016, I examine the more current relationship between housing wealth and private consumption. I extend the Life-Cycle Hypothesis and separate wealth into housing wealth from financial wealth. The main method em-ployed is the Engle-Granger two-step method. Combined with the use of quarterly data, the method allows investigation of the long-term and short-term effects in one methodological framework. Several modifications of a baseline model are tested and compared in search for the best model. The results reinforce the findings of previous studies, that housing wealth has a substantial effect on consumption. The exact estimates may vary depending on the choice of theory and methodology. Nevertheless a considerable effort was made on data selection to ensure that the estimates can provide a reliable update on the relationship, which could be useful for economists and politicians alike. (Less)
Cosmological Perturbations in Restricted f(R)-Gravity

We investigate the metric perturbations of the restricted $f(R)$ theory of gravity in the cosmological context and explore the phenomenological implications of this model. We show that it is possible to construct a restricted model of gravity, in which the background equations are the same as the equations of motion which are derived from the Einstein-Hilbert action with the cosmological constant term. We argue that the deviation from the Einstein-Hilbert model emerges in the perturbed equations, for which we have a nonvanishing anisotropic stress. Further, with the help of the results of Planck data for the modified gravity, we obtain constraints on the parameters of the model.
The ‘ Push and Pull ’ Factors of Distributed Leadership : Exploring Views of Headteachers across Two Countries Dandy

Governments and other stakeholders in education are beginning to recognize the important roles school leaders can play in school development and efforts are being made to allow them to become more involved in managing schools. However, despite these efforts, head teachers are challenged with the perfect leadership style to improve schools. Many scholars have lauded the positives of distributed leadership as one if not the best leadership for school improvement. This study sought to explore distributed leadership across primary schools in Accra-Ghana and Northampton-UK. The study adopted the explanatory sequential mixed method design. In this design, face-to-face interviews and non-participants observations were employed while closed ended questionnaires were given to 65 head teachers and 10 out of the 65 head teachers were sampled and interviewed. Two schools were purposive sampled and observed. The findings of the study revealed that head teachers from both countries understood the concept of distributed leadership as giving leadership opportunity to other teachers to meaningfully accept and take full responsibility for their leadership roles. Despite these findings, head teachers from the two countries have their own style of distributing leadership in the school. Admittedly, head teachers echoed that team work and trust is a necessity for effective and successful distributed leadership in schools. Notwithstanding these benefits of distributed leadership, head teachers from both Northampton and Accra are confronted with some challenges such as who should be involved and to what extent. The researchers recommend that head teachers should find ways of giving freedom to teachers who have the requisite expertise and ready to lead particular areas of the school even if it is for a shorter time. Additionally, a well-structured programme of high quality in-service training should be developed and offered to every head teacher and teacher in order for every school to develop appropriately.
Using Hadoop to Support Big Data Analysis: Design and Performance Characteristics

Today, the amount of data generated is extremely large and is growing faster than computational speeds can keep up with. Therefore, using the traditional ways or we can say using a single machine to store or process data can no longer be beneficial and can take a huge amount of time. As a result, we need a different and better way to process data such as having data distributed over large computing clusters. Hadoop is a framework that allows the distributed processing of large data sets. Hadoop is an open source application available under the Apache License. It is designed to scale up from a single server to thousands of machines, where each machine can perform computations locally and store them. The literature indicates that processing Big Data in a reasonable time frame can be a challenging task. One of the most promising platforms is a concept of Exascale computing. This paper created a testbed based on recommendations for Big Data within the Exascale architecture. This testbed featured three nodes, Hadoop distributed file system. Data from Twitter logs was stored in both the Hadoop file system as well as a traditional MySQL database. The Hadoop file system consistently outperformed the MySQL database. The further research uses larger data sets and more complex queries to truly assess the capabilities of distributed file systems. This research also addresses optimizing the number of processing nodes and the intercommunication paths in the underlying infrastructure of the distributed file system. HIVE.apache. org states that the Apache HIVE data warehouse software facilitates reading, writing, and managing large datasets residing in distributes storage using SQL. At the 3 end, there is an explanation of how to install and launch Hadoop and HIVE, how to configure the rules in a Hadoop ecosystem and the few use cases to check the performance.
Effect of some adverse factors on thediversity and distribution of marinemacro algae along the Indian coasts

The diversity and distribution of marine macro algal resources of Indian waters are affected since early 1970s due to over exploitation, sediment deposition and discharge of effluents, changes in the environmental factors, water temperature, light intensity, tidal waves, cyclones and consequence of bottom trawl fishing. As a result, there is decrease in algal production in Gulf of Mannar, Andhra coast and Kerala coast. On the other hand, there is rising demand for the phycocolloids viz. agar, algin, carrageenan and others. In this context there is an urgent need for conservation and better exploitation of the resources. Regulation of exploitation, control of pollution by domestic and industrial effluents, conducting algal culture are proposed as measures to overcome the damage to natural algal stocks to enable conservation and sustained production. Attempts have to be made to assess the availability and distribution of marine algae in deeper waters using remote sensing techniques, spot satellite imagery as is done in France (Brittany), English Channel and Australia. The details are discussed in the paper.
Understanding engagement behavior in online brand communities : how social identity relates to frequency of interaction and tweet sentiment

This study explains engagement behavior in online brand communities based on data of Twitter users who present different types of social identities. For this, we examined fifteen online brand communities that are popular on Twitter and originated from fashion, fast-food, gaming, cars, and sports sectors. In total, 27,143 twitter messages were analyzed from 22,333 unique Twitter users. We used the Twitter user’s profile descriptions to classify their social identity with the help of computational methods such as Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing. To study the engagement behavior of the Twitter users, we calculated the tweets sentiment and the frequency of interaction between Twitter users and online brand communities. We found that tweet sentiment and frequency of interaction vary significantly between different social identity groups when mentioning different online brand communities. This result is important for online brand community managers to understand what kind of Twitter users interact with their online brand community and how these users engage with the community. Right now, they might only investigate demographics about the users but do not consider the user’s self-presentation online. Furthermore, we made a theoretical contribution by including a larger dataset, by performing computational methods and by exploring multiple online brand communities from different sectors.
The Application of Computer Image Analysis Based on Textural Features for the Identification of Barley Kernels Infected with Fungi of the Genus Fusarium

Abstract The aim of this study was to develop discrimination models based on textural features for the identification of barley kernels infected with fungi of the genus Fusarium and healthy kernels. Infected barley kernels with altered shape and discoloration and healthy barley kernels were scanned. Textures were computed using MaZda software. The kernels were classified as infected and healthy with the use of the WEKA application. In the case of RGB, Lab and XYZ color models, the classification accuracies based on 10 selected textures with the highest discriminative power ranged from 95 to 100%. The lowest result (95%) was noted in XYZ color model and Multi Class Classifier for the textures selected using the Ranker method and the OneR attribute evaluator. Selected classifiers were characterized by 100% accuracy in the case of all color models and selection methods. The highest number of 100% results was obtained for the Lab color model with Naive Bayes, LDA, IBk, Multi Class Classifier and J48 classifiers in the Best First selection method with the CFS subset evaluator.
Prototypicality of arguments and conformity to ingroup norms.

Social categorization is claimed to elicit a tendency to conform to ingroup norms, which may result in attitude change after exposure to information on the opinions of other ingroup members. It was hypothesized that the degree to which arguments represented ingroup norms, i.e., were prototypical, would affect their potential influence on attitudes, such that prototypical arguments would be perceived as being of higher quality and would elicit more attitude change. Moreover, prototypical arguments were expected to elicit more argument elaboration. Two experiments were designed to test these predictions. In Experiment 1 subjects were exposed to both a set of pro and a set of contra arguments, while one of the sets was allegedly prototypical of ingroup attitudes. In Experiment 2 subjects were exposed to either prototypical or a-prototypical pro or contra arguments allegedly originating from in- or outgroup. In both studies conformity to ingroup norms was observed. In addition, prototypical ingroup arguments elicited higher quality ratings in the first study. Indications of higher elaboration of prototypical ingroup arguments were found.
NEW MEASUREMENTS OF SEXTUPOLE FIELD DECAY AND SNAPBACK EFFECT ON TEVATRON DIPOLE MAGNETS

To perform detailed studies of the dynamic effects in superconducting accelerator magnets, a fast continuous harmonics measurement system based on the application of a digital signal processor (DSP) has been built at Fermilab. Using this new system, the dynamic effects in the sextupole field, such as the field decay during the dwell at injection and the rapid subsequent ''snapback'' during the first few seconds of the energy ramp, are evaluated for more than ten Tevatron dipoles from the spare pool. The results confirm the previously observed fast drift in the first several seconds of the sextupole decay and provide additional information on a scaling law for predicting snapback duration. The information presented here can be used for an optimization of the Tevatron and for future LHC operations.
The impact of cross-cultural communication on collective efficacy in NCAA basketball teams

This research contributes to the knowledge and theory on cross-cultural communication by investigating the impact of cross-cultural communication competence on the collective efficacy of multicultural National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball teams. Data was collected from 140 US National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball coaches via the Cross-Cultural Communication Competence Questionnaire and the Collective Efficacy Questionnaire for Sports. Principle component analysis was conducted on the data, revealing that the cross-cultural communication competence and collective efficacy of basketball teams are multidimensional. The hypothesized relationship between cross-cultural communication competence and collective efficacy was confirmed and statistically measured through regression analysis. It was found that four of the cross-cultural communication competence dimensions produced by the principle component analysis exhibited a significant positive relationship with one of the two dimensions within collective efficacy. Given the well-supported relationship between collective efficacy and team performance in business, this study produces important implications for scholars and practitioners working with multicultural sporting teams.
Influence of Energy Level and Glycine Supplementation on Performance, Nutrient Digestibility and Egg Quality in Laying Hens

Sixty four, 30-week-old, Lohmann Brown-Lite laying hens were randomly allocated to one of four treatments with eight replicates per treatment and two hens per replicate for a 10 week study. The control diet was a high energy (11.81 MJ/kg) diet and the moderate energy (11.39 MJ/kg) diets were formulated dropping the level of animal fat. The three moderate energy diets were fed either unsupplemented (0.0%) or supplemented with 0.05 or 0.10% glycine. There were no significant differences (p>0.05) in hen-day egg production, egg weight, feed intake or feed conversion between birds fed the unsupplemented moderate energy and high energy diets. Significant differences were detected concerning egg components and quality measurements as assessed by albumen percentage (p = 0.02), yolk weight (p = 0.02), yolk percentage (p 0.05) effects on egg production or feed conversion. Glycine supplementation significantly increased egg content (p<0.01), albumen weight (p<0.01) and percentage (p<0.01) as well as yolk weight (p<0.01) while yolk percentage (p = 0.04), yolk to albumen ratio (p = 0.01) and egg shell percentage (p<0.01) were linearly decreased. Supplementation with glycine produced a tendency (p = 0.09) towards an increase in the percentage of large eggs (63-72.9 g) produced with a concomitant decrease in the percentage of small (below 53 g) eggs (p = 0.09). The overall results of this study indicate that glycine