Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Biogeosciences Mercury concentrations and pools in four Sierra Nevada forest sites , and relationships to organic carbon and nitrogen

This study presents data on mercury (Hg) concentrations, stochiometric relations to carbon (C) and nitrogen (N), and Hg pool sizes in four Sierra Nevada forest sites of similar exposure and precipitation regimes, and hence similar atmospheric deposition, to evaluate how ecosystem parameters control Hg retention in ecosystems. In all four sites, the largest amounts of Hg reside in soils which account for 94– 98% of ecosystem pools. Hg concentrations and Hg/C ratios increase in the following order: Green Needles/Leaves <Dry Needles/Leaves <Oi litter<Oe litter<Oa litter. Stochiometric relations show negative correlations between Hg and C (r2=0.58) and N and C ( r2=0.64) in decomposing litter, but a positive correlation between litter Hg and N ( r2=0.70). These inverse relations may reflect preferential retention of N and Hg over C during decomposition, or may be due to older age of decomposed litter layers which are exposed to longer-term atmospheric Hg deposition in the field. The results indicate that litter Hg levels depend on decomposition stage and may not follow generally observed positive relationships between Hg and organic C. Mineral soil layers show strong positive correlations of Hg to C across all sites and soil horizons ( r2=0.83), but Hg concentrations are even more closely related to N with a similar slope to that observed in litter ( 2=0.92). Soil N levels alone explain over 90% of Hg pool sizes across the four Sierra Nevada forest sites. This suggests that soil organic N and C groups provide sorption sites for Hg to retain atmospheric deposition. However, the patterns could be due to Correspondence to: D. Obrist (daniel.obrist@dri.edu) indirect relationships where high soil N and C levels reflect high ecosystem productivity which leads to corresponding high atmospheric Hg deposition inputs via leaf litterfall and plant senescence. Our results also show that two of the sites previously affected by prescribed burning and wildfires show significant depletion of above-ground Hg pools but that belowground Hg pools remain unaffected. We conclude that sequestration of Hg in remote Sierra Nevada forest sites is strongly co-determined by ecosystem parameters with C and N pools being excellent determinants for the pool sizes of Hg.
Effect of wood ash fertilization on stand growth, soil, water and needle chemistry, and berry yields of lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea L.) in a Scots pine stand in Finland

Soil chemical properties, needle nutrient concentrations and tree growth were investigated 12 years after the application of 1.0, 2.5 and 5.0 t ha–1 of loose wood ash in a 100-year-old Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) stand. In addition, the effects of wood ash on acidity and element mobility in the soil solution were studied during the 2to 10-year period, and the yields of Vaccinium vitis-idaea L. (lingonberry) berries were studied during the 11to 14-year period after wood ash application. In the humus layer, wood ash decreased soil acidity by 1.3 to 2.5 pH units, and significantly increased the concentrations of extractable Ca and Mg with the two highest doses of ash. Compared to the controls, the increase in both the total and extractable Ca concentrations was 4-fold and 9-fold after the treatments with 2.5 and 5.0 t ha–1 of wood ash, respectively. The neutralisation effects of wood ash were seen also in the uppermost mineral soil layer, but only with the highest dose of ash. Wood ash had an increasing effect on Ca, K and Mg concentrations in the soil solution at 20 cm depth, but had no appreciable effect either on the NO3 concentration or pH in the soil solution. The concentrations of Cd, Cr, Cu and Pb in the soil solution were not increased by the application of wood ash. Wood ash with the dose of 5.0 t ha–1 had a decreasing effect on the yields of V. vitis-idaea berries. Wood ash had no significant effect on volume growth. The two highest doses of wood ash had an increasing effect on B concentrations in the needles.
Effects of computer game playing on spatial skills

Hirvasoja, Mika Olavi Effects of Computer Game Playing on Spatial Skills / Mika Hirvasoja Jyvaskyla: University of Jyvaskyla, 2004. 79 pages Master’s Thesis This thesis focused on the effects of computer game playing on spatial skills and examined the possibly differential response to training between the sexes. The concepts of computer games and spatial ability were introduced and previous studies in the subject area were also reviewed. The empirical research contained a five-hour 3D action computer game treatment, which was found not to have a significant impact on the subjects’ mental rotation skills. The females in the experimental group gained more from practice than the males, but as an identical trend was visible in the control group as well, a conclusion could not be drawn. Statistically significant initial gender differences in mental rotation were not witnessed, experienced gamers’ mental rotation skills were not markedly stronger than the non-gamers’ skills, and neither success in a word game, nor in the 3D action game were found to correlate with mental rotation skills.
Analysts' Stock Recommendations, Earnings Growth and Risk

A key output of sell-side analysts is their recommendations to investors as to whether they should, buy, hold or sell a company's shares. However, relatively little is known regarding the determinants of those recommendations. This study considers this question, presenting results that suggest that recommendations are dependent on analysts’ short-term and long-term earnings growth forecasts, as well as on proxies for the analysts’ unobservable views on earnings growth in the more distant future and risk. Furthermore, analysts who appear to incorporate earnings growth beyond the long-term growth forecast horizons and risk into their recommendation decisions make more profitable stock recommendations.
Predictors of Attitudes Toward Autonomous Vehicles: The Roles of Age, Gender, Prior Knowledge, and Personality

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) hold considerable promise for maintaining aging adults’ mobility as they develop impairments in driving skill. Nonetheless, attitudes can be a significant barrier to adoption as has been shown for other technologies. We investigated how different introductions to AV, video with a driver in the front seat, the rear seat, and a written description, affected attitudes, as well as how individual difference variables such as age, gender, prior knowledge, and personality traits predict attitudes within a middle-aged (Median age = 34, IQR = 20, n = 441) Amazon Mechanical Turk sample. The 16-item attitude survey uncovered three factors: Concern with AV, Eagerness to Adopt AV technology, and Willingness to Relinquish Driving Control. ANOVAs showed that only age (younger less concerned) and gender, (females more concerned) were significant factors in Concern with AV. Only gender affected Willingness to Relinquish Driving Control, with males more willing. Multiple regressions that included previous knowledge level and personality traits showed a different pattern. Female gender and greater conscientiousness were associated with greater Concern about AV. Prior knowledge of AV was associated with less concern. Emotional stability and openness to experience were positive predictors of Eagerness to Adopt AV, whereas conscientiousness was a negative predictor. Prior knowledge and openness to experience, positively, and extraversion, negatively, were associated with being willing to relinquish driving control. These results suggest that different information dissemination campaigns are needed to persuade consumers to adopt AV technology. We discuss potential approaches.
Expectations of Professionals in The Turkish Stock Market: a Study of a Monthly Reuters Survey

Reuters-Turkey News Service conducted a monthly survey of forecasts of the senior analysts, portfolio managers, or strategists of the major brokerage houses in the Istanbul Stock Exchange on the next month’s closing level of the ISE-100 index. The survey data are analyzed in this study, in order to assess the forecasting performance of market professionals, to test previously documented behavioral biases of analyst expectations and some specific hypotheses of the noisy rational expectations literature. The results suggest that: i) survey participants’ forecasts have no significant predictive power, ii) they exhibit optimism bias, iii) they tend to extrapolate from the past despite the fact that the degree of extrapolation is negatively correlated with forecast performance, iv) extrapolation is insignificant when the previous period’s return is negative, v) there is little evidence of persistence in the forecasting performance over time, and vi) participants seem to place greater weight on market price than on their priors.
Radiocarbon Dating of Single Compounds Isolated from Pottery Cooking Vessel Residues

We have developed and demonstrated a practical methodology for dating specific compounds (and octade-canoic or stearic acid—C18:0—in particular) from the lipid material surviving in archaeological cooking pots. Such compounds may be extracted from about 10 g of cooking potsherd, and, after derivatization, can be purified by gas chromatography. To obtain sufficient material for precise dating repetitive, accumulating, GC separation is necessary. Throughout the 6000-year period studied, and over a variety of site environments within England, dates on C18:0 show no apparent systematic error, but do have a greater variability than can be explained by the errors due to the separation chemistry and measurement process alone. This variability is as yet unexplained. Dates on C16:0 show greater variability and a systematic error of approximately 100-150 years too young, and it is possible that this is due to contamination from the burial environment. Further work should clarify this.
Genetic Transformation of Citrus paradisi with Antisense and Untranslatable RNA-dependent RNA Polymerase Genes of Citrus tristeza closterovirus

Protein and RNA-mediated forms of pathogen-derived resistance (PDR) have been developed against many viruses in different plants. However, no resistance has been reported against Citrus tristeza virus (CTV), a closterovirus, in Citrus species transformed with coat protein genes or other sequences of CTV. The successful use of replication-associated genes in RNA-mediated resistance in other crops prompted the use of the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) gene of CTV for the development of RNA-mediated PDR in Citrus. The RdRP gene was amplified from CTV isolate DPI3800 from Florida and used to generate antisense (RdRp-AS) and untranslatable (RdRp-UT) constructs with point mutation consecutive stop codons in the 5’ end of the RdRp gene for use in plant transformation. A total of 3120 etiolated epicotyl segments of Duncan grapefruit (Citrus paradisi Macf. cv. Duncan) were transformed with these constructs using Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation. From these segments 1040 kanamycin-resistant shoots were regenerated, and a total of 131 putative transgenic shoots were identified by fluorescent microscopy and histochemical b-glucuronidase (GUS) assays. One hundred GUS positive plants were rooted and 66 plants survived and were established on soil. A total of 41 plants were tested by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for the presence of the GUS gene and for the transgenes. Eighteen GUS-positive and transgene-positive plants (8 with RdRp-AS, and 10 with RdRp-UT) were identified.
Modelling the Impact of Direct and Indirect Taxes Using Complementary Datasets

Comprehensive modelling of the impact of taxes and tax policy options requires data on the impact at micro-level of both direct and indirect taxes. There are, however, limits on the amount of data that can be gathered by any one survey. With some exceptions, most notably the Living Costs and Food Survey (LCF) in the UK, most national expenditure surveys are not suitable for use in detailed modelling of the direct tax and welfare system. This makes approaches which impute expenditure data into detailed income surveys of considerable interest. In this paper, we assess the sensitivity of the distributional effects of indirect taxes to the choice between actual, estimated and imputed expenditure data. By doing so, the analysis here serves as an updated picture of the distributional effects of the indirect tax system in Ireland, as well as a base for future microsimulation analysis of simultaneous direct tax, indirect tax and welfare reform.
Time Consistency in Alternating-Move Policy Games

We examine alternating-move policy games where the government and the private sector alternate their moves. In contrast with the standard policy game, the set of equilibrium payoffs of the present model is bounded away from the payoff under the one-shot Nash equilibrium, called the Kydland-Prescott outcome, and the upper bound is close to the payoff under the optimal policy (called the Ramsey policy) if the government is sufficiently patient. In other words, the Kydland-Prescott outcome is not time consistent, while the Ramsey outcome could be approximated by a time-consistent policy of the same game.
Reduction of Spontaneous Electrical Activity and Pain Perception of Trigger Points in the Upper Trapezius Muscle through Trigger Point Compression and Passive Stretching

Objectives: Investigate the effects of ischemic compression [IC] technique and passive stretching [PS] in isolation and in combination on the reduction of spontaneous electrical activity [SEA] and perceived pain in trigger points [TrPs] located in the upper trapezius muscle. Methods: Ninety participants with TrPs in the upper trapezius muscle were randomly assigned to three treatment groups: IC, PS, and IC + PS. TrP compression was applied on the TrP for three applications of 60 seconds each, followed by a 30-second rest period. PS was applied for three 45-second applications, with 30-second rest intervals. All patients received the same amount of therapy. Results: Significant decreases were found in pain perception and on SEA for all study participants. The IC + PS group evidenced greater declines in pain perception and SEA when compared to the IC and PS groups. Conclusion: Because of ethical considerations, a control group design was not possible, thereby limiting the robustness of the findings. Although each technique significantly reduced pain perception and SEA, the combination of IC and PS was superior, apparently because of the complementary nature of the therapeutic interventions.
Creating a standard for evaluating Distant Supervision for Relation Extraction

English. This paper defines a standard for comparing relation extraction (RE) systems based on a Distant Supervision (DS). We integrate the well-known New York Time corpus with the more recent version of Freebase. Then, we define a simpler RE system based on DS, which exploits SVMs, tree kernels and a simple one-vs-all strategy. The resulting model can be used as a baseline for system comparison. We also study several example filtering techniques for improving the quality of the DS output. Italiano. Questo articolo definisce uno standard per comparare sistemi per l’estrazione di relazioni (ER) basati su Distant Supervision. In questo lavoro, integriamo il famoso corpus New York Time con la recente versione di Freebase. Quindi, definiamo in sistema di ER che usa DS basato su SVMs, tree kernels e la strategia uno-contro-tutti. Il modello risultante puo essere usato come baseline per la comparazione di sistemi. In aggiunta, studiamo diverse tecniche di filtraggio degli esempi prodotti dalla DS per migliorare la qualita del suo output.
The saprotrophic wood-degrading abilities of Rigidoporus microporus

Saprotrophic wood-decaying abilities ofRigidoporus microporus (Polyporales, Basidiomycota) syn. Rigidoporus lignosus and the structural alterations induced in wood blocks of Hevea bra-siliensis Muell. Arg were studied. Mass loss of wood blocks was analyzed after 3 and 6 months respectively and the patterns of decay by pathogenic and endophytic isolates of this fungus were investigated using light microscopy. Effects of temperature on growth of the isolates on malt extract agar were also investigated. The R. microporus isolated from a non-H. brasiliensis host caused the highest percentage mass loss (27.2% after 6 months), followed by isolates ED310 (21.1%) and M13 (15.7%), both collected from diseased H. brasiliensis plantations. The isolate initially identified as an endophyte showed very low saprotrophic wood decay capability (4.3% after 6 months). The optimal temperature for growth of the isolates was 30 °C; except for the endophytic isolate which showed highest growth at 25 °C. Wood samples degraded by the R. microporus isolates showed simultaneous attack of wood cell walls, typical of white rot fungi. Results of the study indicate variability in the wood degrading abilities of the isolates and the potential differences in their physiology are discussed. Our findings further support the need for a taxonomical revision of the Rigidoporus genus.
Impact of Preeclampsia on Birth Weight by Gestational Age

Early diagnosis and treatment of preeclampsia could have a substantial impact on maternal, fetal and infant health. The aim of this study is to carry out an overall study of preeclampsia and its complications on the birth weight and gestational age in the case and control groups. 400 pregnant mothers referring to Imam Khomeini Hospital of Ahvaz are investigated. The study is conducted as retrospective review of patient’s records with a focus on the goals and variables. The obtained data are analyzed by the descriptive statistics and statistical tests. There is a significant relationship between preeclampsia and birth weight in term and preterm labor (P<0.0001). There is no significant relationship between preeclampsia and birth weight and term labor but this relationship has been significant in preterm labor (P<0.0001). Preeclampsia is a heterogeneous disorder that limits the fetal growth and could also be followed by normal fetal growth. Therefore patients with restricted fetal growth will have preterm labor and the presence of preeclampsia is an exacerbating factor in this process. In cases of term labor of preeclampsia patients the fetal growth is more appropriate and the birth weight is relatively higher and closer to the normal range.
A Comparison of yield of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid examination versus post bronchoscopic sputum examination in the diagnosis of sputum smear negative pulmonary tuberculosis

Results: Tuberculosis was confirmed by smear examination for AFB in BAL fluid in 30 cases (41.6%), by post bronchoscopy sputum in 18 cases (25%). BAL culture for M. tuberculosis was positive in 37(51.3%) patients whereas PBS culture was positive in 23 (32%) patients. We were able to diagnose 39 out of 72 cases (54.2%) by combining both BAL fluid and PBS smear examination and culture for AFB. Out of these 39 cases diagnosed, BAL was more effective method with sensitivity of 94.87 % and yield of 51.38% (37/72) whereas sensitivity and yield of PBS was 58.97% and (23/72) 31.94% respectively. Conclusions: Patients of SSNPTB must be subjected to bronchoscopy and its guided procedures before starting empirical antitubercular treatment. In our study Bronchoalveolar lavage had more sensitivity and yield as compared to post bronchoscopy sputum in detection of SSNPTB.
ANALYSIS OF THE SPATIAL ORGANIZATION OF VALLONIA PULCHELLA (MULLER, 1774) ECOLOGICAL NICHE IN TECHNOSOLS (NIKOPOL MANGANESE ORE BASIN, UKRAINE)

The ecological niche of Vallonia pulchella (Muller, 1774) was investigated by means of the general factor analysis of GNESFA. It was revealed that the ecological niche of a micromollusk is determined by both edaphic factors and ecological features of vegetation. Ecological niche optima may be presented by integral variables such as marginality and specialization axes and may be plotted in geographic space. The spatial distribution of the Vallonia pulchella habitat suitability index (HSI) within the Technosols (sod-lithogenic soils on red-brown clays) is shown, which allows predicting the optimal conditions for the existence of the species.
Industrial CO 2 Emissions Efficiency and its Determinants in China: Analyzing Differences Across Regions and Industry Sectors

This paper utilizes industrial CO2 emissions efficiency as a measure of the low-carbon transformation index and used industrial provincial panel data during 1997-2014 and industrial panel data during 200014 based on the modified Super-SBM model with undesirable outputs that measure carbon efficiency levels of different provinces and industrial sectors in China. Differences among sectors and provinces were calculated using the Dagum Gene coefficient and the subgroup decomposition method, and the determinants of carbon efficiency were explored by regression analysis. It turns out that industrial CO2 emissions efficiency in China is generally low, and it has been steadily improving since 2003. Industrial carbon efficiency shows the unbalanced characteristics (high in eastern areas, low in western areas) and the value of the western regions was overtaken by the central region during the period of the 12th Five-Year Plan. From the perspective of industrial sectors, industrial CO2 emissions efficiency of lightly polluted industries is significantly higher than that of moderately and heavily polluted industries. In addition, the carbon efficiency of technology-intensive industries and clean production industries as part of industries with light pollution is at an optimal level, while that of some resource-intensive industries and traditional manufacturing industries is relatively low. Both the regional and industrial sectors’ Dagum Gini coefficients of industrial carbon efficiency exhibit the tendency of down first, and then up and stable on the whole. The regional disequilibrium problem mainly arises from the gap between the eastern and western regions, and the inter-industry gap is primarily manifested between heavily polluted and lightly polluted industries. The relationship between scale effect and industrial carbon efficiency presents a “U”-type curve. Ownership structure, technological innovation, government environment, and openness degree can all have a positive effect on industrial carbon efficiency, while endowment structure and energy *e-mail: fengrui0605@hotmail.com DOI: 10.15244/pjoes/76794 ONLINE PUBLICATION DATE: 2018-02-27 1240 Shen C. , et al.
Towards a Design Model for Job Crafting Information Systems Promoting Individual Health, Productivity and Organizational Performance Research-in-Progress

The nature of work has dramatically changed over that last decades: steadily increasing workloads and job-related pressure impact not only health and productivity outcomes of employees but also organizations’ overall performance. The support of job crafting behavior is promising in this regard as it allows employees to balance job-related psychological and social demands and resources by proactively shaping their job characteristics. However, job crafting interventions require highly trained work and health specialists, resulting in low adoption rates by organizations until now. Due to the potential of costefficient and scalable IT-tailored interventions, we aim to develop design principles for so-called job crafting ISs (JCISs) by designing, implementing and evaluating several prototypes. As a first step, the current research-in-progress proposes a design model for JCISs that addresses three major limitations that are lack of (1) motivation theory in IS research, (2) research on job crafting behavior and (3) a multilevel perspective.