Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A dynamical reconstruction of the Last Glacial Maximum ocean state constrained by global oxygen isotope data

Abstract. Combining ocean general circulation models with proxy data via data assimilation is a means to obtain estimates of past ocean states that are consistent with model physics as well as with proxy data. The climate during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 19–23 ka) was substantially different from today. Even though boundary conditions are comparatively well known, the large-scale patterns of the ocean circulation during this time remain uncertain. Previous efforts to combine ocean models with proxy data have shown dissimilar results regarding the state of the ocean, in particular of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Here, we present a new LGM ocean state estimate that extents previous estimates by using global benthic as well as planktic data on the oxygen isotopic composition of calcite. It is further constrained by global seasonal and annual sea surface temperature (SST) reconstructions. The estimate shows an Atlantic Ocean that is similar to the Late Holocene Atlantic Ocean but with a reduced formation of Antarctic Bottom Water, in contrast to results of previous studies. The results indicate that SST and oxygen isotopic data alone do not require the presence of a shallower North Atlantic Deep Water and a more extensive Antarctic Bottom Water, and highlight the need for more proxy data of different types to obtain reliable ocean state estimates. Additional adjoint sensitivity experiments reveal that data from the deep North Atlantic and from the global deep Southern Ocean are most important to constrain the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.
Mechanical performance of hybrid woven jute–roselle-reinforced polyester composites

Natural fibre acts as a significant replacement for the known synthetic fibre that tends to cause critical environmental issues. Hence, the hybridization of natural fibre reinforcement has been considered as one of the strategies in reducing synthetic fibre applications. The current research was conducted to determine the effect of layering sequence on the mechanical performance of hybrid woven jute–roselle. In addition, eight different types of composite plate that consisted of single and hybrid were fabricated through the implementation of hand lay-up method. In this case, each composite plate had to undergo the tensile, flexural and impact testing in order to acquire the effect of varying layering sequences. The results of the present study showed that the hybridization of jute–roselle provided was significant, especially on the flexural and impact performance. Furthermore, the tensile strength and modulus were higher on the JRRJ sample and maximum flexural strength also managed to be recorded by the same sample. However, the maximum flexural modulus only managed to be recorded in sample RRJJ. Meanwhile, the impact testing revealed that the composite plate of sample JJRR had the highest impact strength. The void content for all the samples was acceptable because all of them were less than 7%. Finally, scanning electron microscopic image illustrated that the fractured surfaced of composite sample was typically smooth with less formation of void and fibre pull-out.
Motivation and the Brain: How Do Appetitive versus Aversive States Relate

Over the last decades, frontal alpha asymmetries observed during resting state periods of several minutes have been used as a marker of affective–motivational states. To date, there is no evidence that alpha asymmetries can be observed in response to brief affective–motivational stimuli, as typically presented in event-related designs. As we argue, frontal alpha asymmetry might indeed be elicited by brief events if they are salient enough. In an event-related design, we used erotic pictures, i.e., highly salient incentives to elicit approach motivation, and contrasted them with pictures of dressed attractive women. As expected, we found significant alpha asymmetries for erotic pictures as compared to control pictures. Our findings suggest that the highly reactive reward system can lead to immediate, phasic changes in frontal alpha asymmetries. We discuss the findings with respect to the notion that high salience of erotic pictures derives from their potential of satisfying an individuals’ need by mere visual inspection, which is not the case for pictures showing other types of motivational stimuli such as food.
A longitudinal study of the use of high frequency nouns among Malaysian secondary school students / Zhang Xinxin

This study investigates how second language development takes place over time. It takes nouns as a starting point, and explores how selected nouns are used differently in the texts taken from the Longitudinal Corpus of Languaculturer Narrative Texts (Chau, 2015). The texts (based on the same prompt) consist of four parts written at four different points in time by the same group of students. Five most frequent nouns river, girl, flowers, lake, and friend together with their respective singular or plural forms were selected for the investigation. Pattern Grammar (Hunston & Francis, 1999) was adopted to explore how these selected words were used over time. The findings show both a constructive process and a reductionist process (Chau, 2015) operate at the same time in learner data, and indicate that language development is a non-linear and complex process (e.g., Larsen-Freeman, 2006, 2009; Ortega, 2009; Ellis, 2011; Chau, 2015). Meanwhile, it is found that students are able to use more adjectives and nouns to modify the words in focus at a later period in time, which shows students’ lexical repertoire has expanded across time. Implications of the study are provided.
Commutative ideal theory without finiteness conditions : Completely irreducible ideals

An ideal of a ring is completely irreducible if it is not the intersection of any set of proper overideals. We investigate the structure of completely irrreducible ideals in a commutative ring without finiteness conditions. It is known that every ideal of a ring is an intersection of completely irreducible ideals. We characterize in several ways those ideals that admit a representation as an irredundant intersection of completely irreducible ideals, and we study the question of uniqueness of such representations. We characterize those commutative rings in which every ideal is an irredundant intersection of completely irreducible ideals.
Exploring the experiences of school exclusion for pupils on the autism spectrum

Children and young people on the autism spectrum frequently report a range of negative educational experiences and face disproportionately high rates of school exclusion, which can have a significant impact on their wellbeing and educational outcomes. The implementation of appropriate educational provision for these pupils is vital to ensure positive educational experiences and to reduce school exclusions. To date, remarkably few studies have explored the school exclusion experiences of pupils on the autism spectrum. This study adopted a multi-informant approach in an attempt to understand the factors that potentially contribute to the exclusion experiences of autistic pupils. Information about the characteristics of the pupils was gathered to identify the range of needs for this particular sample, including their autistic features, behaviour, sensory needs, quality of life, and general cognitive ability. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with pupils, parents, teachers and local authority professionals to further understand the pupils’ school exclusion experiences. Inclusive methodological approaches were used within the interview process with the pupils to help ensure that their perspectives were successfully gained. The results revealed overwhelmingly negative accounts of autistic pupils’ school exclusion experiences with detrimental impacts on the child and their family. The quantitative data in this study showed variation in the individual characteristics of the pupils, thus suggesting that exclusion was not the result of particular individual factors. Instead, these school exclusion experiences seemed to result from school- and system-level factors. Autistic pupils struggled to access mainstream schools and spent significant amounts of time out of education while their parents reported having trouble navigating the complex local authority processes in an attempt to secure an appropriate educational environment. Professionals attempted to promote the inclusion of autistic pupils but struggled due to capacity. Aspects of the alternative provisions that were successful for these pupils were highlighted, including a focus on individual need, an inclusive ethos, positive relationships and a collaborative approach. The implications these results have for schools, educational psychologists and educational policy makers are discussed.
An evaluation of the ability of the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) to observe boundary layer ozone pollution across China: application to 2005–2017 ozone trends

Abstract. Nadir-viewing satellite observations of tropospheric ozone in the UV have been shown to have some sensitivity to boundary layer ozone pollution episodes, but so far they have not yet been compared to surface ozone observations collected by large-scale monitoring networks. Here we use 2013–2017 surface ozone data from China's new Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) network of ∼ 1000 sites, together with vertical profiles from ozonesondes and aircraft, to quantify the ability of tropospheric ozone retrievals from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) and to detect boundary layer ozone pollution in China. We focus on summer when ozone pollution in China is most severe and when OMI has the strongest sensitivity. After subtracting the Pacific background, we find that the 2013–2017 mean OMI ozone enhancements over eastern China have strong spatial correlation with the corresponding multiyear means in the surface afternoon observations (R=0.73), and that OMI can estimate these multiyear means in summer afternoon surface ozone with a precision of 8 ppb. The OMI data show significantly higher values on observed surface ozone episode days (>82 ppb) than on non-episode days. Day-to-day correlations with surface ozone are much weaker due to OMI noise and are stronger for sites in southern China (<34∘ N; R=0.3–0.6) than in northern China (R=0.1–0.3) because of weaker retrieval sensitivity and larger upper tropospheric variability in the north. Ozonesonde data show that much of the variability of OMI ozone over southern China in summer is driven by the boundary layer. Comparison of 2005–2009 and 2013–2017 OMI data indicates that mean summer afternoon surface ozone in southern China (including urban and rural regions) has increased by 3.5±3.0 ppb over the 8-year period and that the number of episode days per summer has increased by 2.2±0.4 (as diagnosed by an extreme value model), generally consistent with the few long-term surface records. Ozone increases have been particularly large in the Yangtze River Delta and in the Hubei, Guangxi and Hainan provinces.
Face de-identification for privacy protection

The ability to record, store and analyse images of faces economically, rapidly and on a vast scale brings people’s attention to privacy. The current privacy protection approaches for face images are mainly through masking, blurring or black-out which, however, removes data utilities along with the identifying information. As a result, these ad hoc methods are hardly used for data publishing or in further researches. The technique of de-identification attempts to remove identifying information from a dataset while preserving the data utility as much as possible. The research on de-identify structured data has been established while it remains a challenge to de-identify unstructured data such as face data in images and videos. The k-Same face de-identification was the first method that attempted to use an established de-identification theory, k-anonymity, to de-identify a face image dataset. The k-Same face de-identification is also the starting point of this thesis. Re-identification risk and data utility are two incompatible aspects in face de-identification. The focus of this thesis is to improve the privacy protection performance of a face de-identification system while providing data utility preserving solutions for different application scenarios. This thesis first proposes the k-Samefurthest face de-identification method which introduces the wrong-map protection to the k-Same-M face de-identification, where the identity loss is maximised by replacing an original face with the face that has the least similarity to it. The data utility of face images has been considered from two aspects in this thesis, the dataset-wise data utility such as data distribution of the data set and the individual-wise data utility such as the facial expression in an individual image. With the aim to preserve the diversity of a face image dataset, the k-Diff-furthest face de-identification method is proposed, which extends the k-Same-furthest method and can provide the wrong-map protection. With respect to the data utility of an individual face image, the visual quality and the preservation of facial expression are discussed in this thesis. A method to merge the isolated de-identified face region and its original image background is presented. The described method can increase the visual quality of a de-identified face image in
Contemporary Asian Drug Policy: Insights and Opportunities for Change

This report highlights the shifting drug policy landscape in Asia, with a special focus on (1) the violent crackdown on drug users and sellers in the Philippines, (2) Thailand's move toward an alternative approach of reducing criminal sanctions for drug use and improving access to medication treatment and needle exchange, and (3) China's emergence as a major source of many new chemical precursors and drugs that are exported outside Asia.
Effect of Evaporating Sea Spray on Heat Fluxes in a Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer

A detailed analysis of the evaporating ocean spray effect on the vertical latent and sensible heat fluxes in a marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL) for different droplet sizes, vertical distributions of air temperature, humidity, and turbulent intensity is presented. For our analysis we have employed a two-temperature nonequilibrium MABL model developed in our previous work. The obtained analytical and numerical solutions show that the latent and total heat fluxes are significantly enhanced by large droplets because these droplets produce steep vertical gradients of moisture and air temperature in a MABL. Small droplets, however, do not noticeably change the total heat flux but rather redistribute the energy between its sensible and latent components. It has been shown that evaporating spray affects the turbulent kinetic energy (thus the intensity of the vertical turbulent transport) mostly mechanically by altering the vertical distribution of the mass density of the air–spray mixture rather than thermodynamically by changing vertical profiles of the air temperature and moisture. Furthermore, we have found that the vertical profiles of heat fluxes are approximately self-similar for a wide range of defining parameters, that is, can be approximately scaled to a reference heat profile for a wide range of vertical distributions of the temperature, humidity, and turbulence intensity. The obtained analytical expressions for the vertical heat fluxes affected by the spray presence enable their quick and efficient calculations. This will allow for the future construction of a computationally efficient spray and accurate parameterization to be used in global weather prediction models.
Effect of Prolonged Injection of Kisspeptin-54 on Hypothalamo-Pituitary-Gonadal Axis in Adult Male Rats

Kisspeptin-54 is a neuropeptide encoded with Kiss-1 gene which signal by G protein receptors. It has an essential role in controlling reproductive axis by inducing hypothalamic gonadotropin-releasing hormone which in turn induce adenohypophyseal gonadotropins with subsequent stimulation of sex hormones and gamete development from the gonads. Aim: to investigate the effects of prolonged continuous peripheral subcutaneous injection of kisspeptin-54 by use of Alzet miniosmoticpumps on blood levels of LH, FSH, testosterone, testis weight, count and motility of sperms in adult male rats. Material and Methods: two groups of adult male rats (ten rats for each group) were used in the experiments to investigate the results of subcutaneous administration of kisspeptin-54 for 13 days using Alzet miniosmoticpumps implanted subcutaneously in the interscapular region to guarantee continuous delivery of Kisspeptin-54 throughout the study (50 nmol/day). Results: the study results showed that prolonged injection of kisspeptin-54 at a dose of 50 nmol/day for thirteen days in male rats decreased significantly blood level of LH, FSH, testosterone (P < 0.001) and testis weight, sperm count and motility (P < 0.001). Conclusion: it can be concluded that chronic, prolonged and continuous subcutaneous administration of Kisspeptin-54 may affect male fertility by causing significant decrease in testicular weight and sperm viability, count and motility through direct desensitization of hypothalamic–pituitary–gonadal axis rather than direct inhibitory effect on the gonads.
FOLK DEVILS, NEWS ICONS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF MORAL PANICS

In studying media content and effects, scholars sometimes refer to amplifications of deviance and constructions of moral panics. The present article examines how “heroin chic,” a 1990s trend characterized by emaciated, disheveled fashion models and film actors, as well as the symbolic death of music icon Kurt Cobain, interacted with news representations of heroin—namely how the narcotic had reappeared to threaten a new generation of users—thus creating a moral panic. The article posits a role for exemplification theory and news icons in conversations of how moral panics arise and are sustained through mass media. Content analyses of heroin reports in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post (n=1770) revealed increases in references to popular culture during the middle 1990s, with officials citing dramatic exemplars as evidence of a “new scourge” and of “an old enemy making a dangerous comeback. ” Actual heroin use did not appear to increase during 16 years of analysis.
Tackling Parallelization Challenges of Kernel Network Stack for Container Overlay Networks

Overlay networks are the de facto networking technique for providing flexible, customized connectivity among distributed containers in the cloud. However, overlay networks also incur non-trivial overhead due to its complexity, resulting in significant network performance degradation of containers. In this paper, we perform a comprehensive empirical performance study of container overlay networks which identifies unrevealed, important parallelization bottlenecks of the kernel network stack that prevent container overlay networks from scaling. Our observations and root cause analysis cast light on optimizing the network stack of modern operating systems on multi-core systems to more efficiently support container overlay networks in light of high-speed network devices.
Evaluation of Fertilizer Industry Effluent Toxicity in Seed Germination, Growth and Metabolism of Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) Plants

This study was carried out to investigate the effect of fertilizer industry effluent in relation to growth and metabolism of barley plants. Seed germination was found to be decreased by increasing concentrations of effluent. Plant growth stimulated at lower concentrations of effluent in barley plants, while inhibited at higher concentrations of effluent . Increasing concentrations of effluent caused reduction in photosynthetic pigments, sugar and protein concentrations and total amylase activity in barley plants. Yield and catalase enzyme showed variable results at increasing concentrations of effluent.
Culture of Hydrilla (Hydrilla verticillata) in Sand Root Media Amended with Three Fertilizers

Hydrilla [Hydrilla verticillata (L.f.) Royle # HYLLI] was grown for 4 to 16 weeks in pans filled with either an organic muck-sand soil, sand, or sand mixed with Osmocote, Esmigran, and dolomite under outdoor conditions in plastic-lined pools with flowing pond water. Dry weight for plants cultured in sand plus the fertilizers was dependent on the concentration of fertilizer and was from 6 to 14 times that of plants cultured in sand alone. Dry weight was also higher for three treatments of sand amended with fertilizer than for plants cultured in the organic muck-sand soil. Water temperature for different growth periods influenced dry weight of hydrilla cultured with all three root media. Tuber production was independent of three levels of fertilizer for 16 weeks of plant growth, but plant weight was dependent on the concentration of nutrients in the root zone. Of nine plant tissue nutrients measured, only phosphorus in both the shoots and roots was dependent on the level of fertilizer in the root zone. This suggests that growth of hydrilla is controlled by nutrients in the root zone. The use of sand amended with various levels of fertilizers may be a way to simulate fertility levels of sediments as a method to study aquatic sites for their potential to support growth of hydrilla.
Is the economic dimension inducing the other sustainability dimensions, or is it the reverse? Perceptions from the Portuguese metal industry

ABSTRACT In organizational sustainability, the economic dimension is recognized as having a very important role. However, the discussion regarding whether it is exclusively the economic dimension that has the power to induce the other sustainability dimensions is far from agreement. The purpose of the present paper is to analyze the perceptions regarding the existence of mutual influences between the economic dimension of sustainability and the other sustainability dimensions – environmental, social and cultural – in a relevant Portuguese economic sector: the metal industry. The analysis and statistical tests performed with the 211 collected answers led to the conclusion that the influence exerted by the economic dimension on the other sustainability dimensions is perceived as dominant, both in present and future perspectives. The results also show the perception that the economic dimension is equally influenced by the environmental and social dimensions, and in a less extent, by the cultural dimension, and that all these mutual influences are perceived to increase in the future. The existence of organizational management systems has a positive effect on the perceptions regarding the existence of mutual influences between sustainability dimensions, but only for those companies with more than one certified management system. These results confirm that organizational management systems are connected to higher degrees of awareness regarding sustainability issues. Given that the great majority of the sampled industries are SMEs, the results obtained in this research demonstrate that the existence of mutual influences between sustainability dimensions is recognized even in small-sized industries.