Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Thresholds and multiple community states in marine fouling communities: integrating natural history with management strategies

The epifaunal communities characteristic of the southern New England, USA, region between eastern Long Island Sound, CT, and Cape Cod, MA, comprise a complex system in which different mechanisms at certain threshold levels can cause the establishment of 4 distinct community states: (1) a diverse native community dominated by bryozoans and sponges most commonly found in open coast areas, (2) an invasive ascidian community characteristic of marinas and areas of coastal development, (3) a mussel-dominated community occurring after massive recruitment and (4) an ascidian community dominated by Diplosoma listerianum that occurs only in years following warm winters. Each of these states is fairly resilient, but the spatial extent and duration of each state can be highly variable. Transitions among the states occur if some set of threshold conditions are surpassed and reasonable predictions can be made based on knowledge of the natural history of the species within the system. Two sets of processes seem to control the resilience of each state and the thresh- olds beyond which a transition to a new state occurs: (1) fast and local processes such as within- population recruitment, predation or bioengineering by mussels and (2) slow regional processes such as climate change, coastal development or habitat restoration. Of these, coastal development and restoration efforts are under management control and could have large effects on these community states, in particular the native community. However, we may not be able to influence large-scale regional processes such as climate change that may favor non-native communities. Nevertheless, the different community states can be used as indicators of both local and regional management success and allow local management efforts to be put in the context of larger scale shifts in threshold condi- tions that affect regional community patterns.
Brand personality of two beverages categories

This study focuses on the 42 traits of brand personality (Aaker 1997) of six drink brands spanning across two drink segments fizzy drink and mineral water, and measure the congruity of the brands' personalities (five dimension) to the consumer (drinker) of those brands. A number of implications for businesses will be discussed, suggestions for future research are reviewed and the main contributions of the study will
Experimental Research on Quick Structural Health Monitoring Technique for Bridges Using Smartphone

In the recent years, with the development and popularization of smartphone, the utilization of smartphone in the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) has attracted increasing attention owing to its unique feature. Since bridges are of great importance to society and economy, bridge health monitoring has very practical significance during its service life. Furthermore, rapid damage assessment of bridge after an extreme event such as earthquake is very important in the recovery work. Smartphone-based bridge health monitoring and postevent damage evaluation have advantages over the conventional monitoring techniques, such as low cost, ease of installation, and convenience. Therefore, this study investigates the implementation feasibility of the quick bridge health monitoring technique using smartphone. A novel vision-based cable force measurement method using smartphone camera is proposed, and, then, its feasibility and practicality is initially validated through cable model test. An experiment regarding multiple parameters monitoring of one bridge scale model is carried out. Parameters, such as acceleration, displacement, and angle, are monitored using smartphone. The experiment results show that there is a good agreement between the reference sensor and smartphone measurements in both time and frequency domains.
Accounting for Correlation in the Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials with Multiple Layers of Clustering

ACCOUNTING FOR CORRELATION IN THE ANALYSIS OF RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIALS WITH MULTIPLE LAYERS OF CLUSTERING By Adam Baumgardner May 2016 Thesis supervised by Dr. Frank D’Amico. A common goal in medical research is to determine the effect that a treatment has on subjects over time. Unfortunately, the analysis of data from such clinical trials often omits several aspects of the study design, leading to incorrect or misleading conclusions. In this paper, a major objective is to show via case studies that randomized controlled trials with longitudinal designs must account for correlation and clustering among observations in order to make proper statistical inference. Further, the effects of outliers in a multi-center, randomized controlled trial with multiple layers of clustering are examined and strategies for detecting and dealing with outlying observations and clusters are discussed.
Who Takes Risks When and Why: Determinants of Changes in Investor Risk Taking

Between September08 and June09, a period with significant market events, we surveyed UK online-brokerage customers at three-months intervals for their willingness to take risk, three-months expectations of returns and risks for the market and their own portfolio, and self-reported risk attitude. This unique dataset allowed us to analyze how these variables changed over time, and whether changes in risk taking were related to changes in expectations and/or risk attitudes. Risk taking changed substantially during the period, as did return and risk expectations. Numeric assessments of return and risk expectations were only weakly correlated with corresponding subjective judgments. Consistent with the risk-as-feelings hypothesis, changes in risk taking were associated with changes in subjective expectations of market portfolio risk and returns, but less with changes in numeric expectations.
Model Driven Development of Hybrid Databases

The transition from traditional to Big Data technologies has put new challenges in front of existing database modeling techniques. The “Design then implement” approach to relational databases modeling, could not be fully applied to “Discover and analyze” databases with rapid data growth. In the context of Big Data, models have preserved a descriptive role: they are used to analyze and understand the architecture of hybrid data structures. From the Model-Driven Engineering point of view, several questions emerge: Could Big Data and hybrid database models represent a formal specification for a solution, which can be transformed to an executable specification for a specific target platform, using automated transformations? Does the refining mechanism have its place in the process of hybrid data structure development? What is the role of modeling languages in the process of hybrid data structure specification? An approach to modeling hybrid databases, based on empirically validated concepts of Model-Driven Engineering, is presented in this paper. The approach was applied during the implementation of Precision Agriculture Based Information Service (PAIS) application – a web-based service for the collection and archiving of diverse data on crops, and their presentation to farmers.
Effect of a heated and cooled office chair on thermal comfort

A heated/cooled chair was evaluated for its effect on thermal sensation and comfort. Thirty college students participated in 150 1.75-h tests. Two heated/cooled chairs were placed in an environmental chamber resembling an office environment. The chamber temperatures were set at 16°C, 18°C, 25°C, and 29°C (60.8°F, 64.4°F, 77°F, 84.2°F). During the tests, subjects had full control of the chair surface temperature through a knob located on the desk. An additional 64 tests with 16 subjects were conducted at the same 4 temperatures but with regular mesh or cushion chairs in order to provide reference results for comparison. Subjective responses about thermal sensation, comfort, and temperature satisfaction were obtained at 20-min intervals and eight times before, during, and after a break period. The chair's energy consumption was monitored continuously. The results show that the heated/cooled chair strongly influences the subjects’ thermal sensation and comfort, providing thermal comfort under all tested conditions, both warm and cool. The average power draw is 27 W at 16°C (60.8°F), and 45.5 W at 29°C (84.2°F) ambient conditions.
A LARGE-SCALE WELL STIMULATION CAMPAIGN AT MAHANAGDONG GEOTHERMAL FIELD (TONGONAN), PHILIPINES

The Mahanagdong B production sector of the Greater Tongonan Geothermal Field was faced with a serious steam supply problem in the first half of 1997, with only 14 MWe available at the wellhead of seven production wells for a 60 MWe power plant. Significant thermal degradation of the resource brought about by extensive drilling prevented the discharge of most wells even with the aid of air compression and nitrogen gas lifting. Detailed analysis of reservoir and drilling data also revealed that all the wells had been muddamaged. The problem was compounded by the contractual obligation of PNOC-EDC to produce the 60 MWe equivalent of steam to the power plant by the middle of the year.
Comparison of polymerase chain reaction for antigen receptor gene rearrangement and flow cytometric analysis for the diagnosis of canine Lymphoma

Lymphoma is the most common hematopoietic malignancy in dogs. Diagnosis of lymphoma is classically performed by morphological assessment and immunohistochemistry. But some cases in the early stage are difficult to distinguish and need more objective and accurate methods. So, Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for antigen receptor rearrangements (PARR) and flow cytometric immunophenotype of lymphoma have been developed continuously. In this study, we performed these two methods to classify lymphoma type in 3 cases. According to PARR analysis, B cell origin lymphoma was diagnosed in two of three cases by testing PBMC and lymph node. All fine needle aspiration (FNA) samples of lymph nodes had high expression of CD21 on ＞88% of total cell population and PBMC samples also showed high expression of CD21 on ＞30% of total lymphocytes in those two cases, while the expression of CD3, CD4 and CD8 was absent. These results suggest that concurrent use of PARR and flow cytometric immunophenotype is more effective and valuable tool for the diagnosis and monitoring of canine lymphoma patients.
Oldenburg Burnout Inventory - student version: cultural adaptation and validation into Portuguese

The Oldenburg Burnout Inventory for college students (OLBI-S) was adapted to Brazilian Portuguese and its reliability and validity were measured in a sample of both Brazilian (n=958) and Portuguese (n=602) college students. The confirmatory factor analysis of the OLBI-S showed good fit but two items were removed since they lacked individual reliability (λ<.50). The new structure showed good fit to 2/3 of the test sample and was invariant to the other 1/3 of the total sample. Convergent validity and internal consistency were low, but discriminant, concurrent and divergent validity were good. The OLBI-S was not invariant in the Brazilian and Portuguese samples. The adapted OLBI-S did not show cross-cultural validity.
Effect of dietary fatty acid saturation on egg production at end-of-lay

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of dietary fatty acid saturation on production performances of laying hens at end-of-lay. Five isoenergetic (12.6 MJ AME/kg DM) and isonitrogenous (170 g CP/kg DM) diets were formulated using different lipid sources at a constant 30 g/kg inclusion level. The control diet was formulated using a blend (50 : 50) of linseed- and fish oil, while the other treatments consist of pure fish oil (polyunsaturated n-3), sunflower oil (polyunsaturated n-6), high oleic acid (HO) sunflower oil (monounsaturated n-9) and tallow (SFA). Two hundred, individually caged Hy-Line Silver-Brown laying hens (20 weeks of age) were randomly allocated to the five dietary treatments (n = 40 replicates/treatment) and received the experimental diets for 54 weeks from 20 to 74 weeks of age. During weeks 58, 62, 66, 70 and 74 of age (end-of-lay period), all eggs produced were recorded and individually weighed while feed intake, as well as body weights of birds, were determined. Data for the respective collection weeks were pooled to calculate and statistical analyse production parameter means for the end-of-lay period. Average daily feed intake of birds in the polyunsaturated n-3 treatment (97.5 g/b/d) were the lowest while that of the polyunsaturated n-6 treatment (102.4 g/b/d) the highest. Furthermore, despite the significant effect of fatty acid saturation on feed intake, it had no effect on hen-day egg production, egg weight, egg output, feed efficiency or body weight of hens during end-of-lay. Since results of the current study fail to indicate a clear trend regarding dietary fatty acid saturation on feed intake of birds, it could be concluded that the long term exposure to a range of fatty acid saturation levels, has no negative effect on hen performance. Keywords: Eicosapentoenoic-, docosahexaenoic-, α-linolenic-, linoleic acid
Asynchronous maturation of the sexes may limit close inbreeding in a subsocial spider

We studied the temporal patterns of maturation and sexual receptivity of a subsocial spider, Anelosimus cf. jucundus, in southern Arizona. In subsocial spiders, sibling males and females share a common nest for a large portion of their life cycle, often only dispersing short distances close to the mating season. We found that, on average, male A. cf. jucundus matured 9 days earlier than females and that females did not become sexually receptive until 10 days following their final molt to maturity. The periods of sexual receptivity of sibling males and females, therefore, would be separated in time by a significant fraction of an adult male's life cycle. We also found significant asynchrony in maturation dates across nests and nest clusters at the two collection localities. We suggest that these temporal patterns may limit the opportunities for sibling males and females to mate with each other, thus explaining the apparent absence of mechanisms to discriminate against kin as mates in this species.
Evaluation of physicochemical characteristics of pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) fruit during ripening

Introduction . Pomegranate fruit is a good source of bioactive compounds. Although data about the importance of pomegranates in human nutrition has increased extensively in the last years, the fruit physical and chemical characteristics of some Iranian pomegranate cultivars during fruit ripening have not been investigated in detail yet. Therefore, the evaluation of physicochemical characteristics of pomegranate fruit cv. ‘Rabbab-e-Fars’ at three different stages, from fruit set to ripening, was the aim of the present study. Materials and methods . Fruit fresh weight and volume, and peel, aril, juice and seed percentage were measured as physical features and total soluble solids, pH, titrable acidity, ascorbic acid, total sugars, anthocyanins, phenolics and tannins, condensed tannins, and antioxidant activity in the juice were evaluated as the chemical properties. Results . The highest percentage of aril (57.86%) and juice (48.01%) and lowest percentage of peel (42.13%) and seed (10.49%) were observed in 140-day-old fruits. A significant increase in concentrations of total soluble solids and total sugars were recorded during fruit ripening. The ascorbic acid content decreased significantly, while the amount of total anthocyanins increased significantly with fruit maturity. Ripe fruit, which had a low titratable acidity (1.35 g·100 g-1 of fruit juice), showed a correspondingly high pH (3.23). The levels of total phenolics, total tannins, condensed tannins and antioxidant activity declined significantly during fruit ripening. Conclusion . Our results provide important information on the changes in physical and chemical properties of pomegranate fruit during ripening, which is very useful for determination of the fruit quality.
Geostatistical Analysis of the Permeability Coefficient in Different Soil Textures

Summary Estimating soil hydraulic properties are so important for hydrological modeling, designing irrigation-drainage systems and soil transmission of soluble salts and pollutants, although measurements of such parameters have been found costly and time-consuming. Owing to a high spatial variability of soil hydraulic characteristics, a large number of soil samples are required for proper analysis. Nowadays, geostatistical methods are used to estimate soil parameters on the basis of limited data. The purpose of this research is to investigate the spatial variability of the permeability coefficient in different soil textures (26 soil samples) found in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. The parameter values obtained indicated a normal trend in particle size distribution, whereas the values of permeability coefficient showed aberrant distribution patterns. Geostatistical analysis results indicated the best fitted theoretical model was Gaussian model and the proportion of sill/(sill + nugget) was 0.17 indicated strong spatial dependency of soil permeability. Furthermore, the optimal distance for estimating the soil permeability coefficient was 109,119 meters. A comparison of the kriging and IDW interpolation methods showed that both methods can estimate soil permeability with high accuracy and less error. The prediction maps of the applied methods indicated that high soil permeability rates were recorded in the south-east of the Kurdistan region of Iraq compared to low soil permeability rates recorded in the remainder of this region. It is recommended other interpolation methods such as co-kriging and indicator or simple kriging methods could be used to simulate data in large scale areas as well.
The European Electronic Communications Code: A Critical Appraisal with a Focus on Incentivizing Investment in next Generation Broadband Networks

In September 2016, the European Commission (EC) published its proposal for a directive establishing the European Electronic Communications Code (EECC) - with one key aim being the provision of sufficient incentives for infrastructure investments into high-speed communication networks. Based on a detailed review of the theoretical and empirical literature of the most relevant regulatory measures that is, co-investment models as well as different types of access regulation - we provide a critical appraisal of the respective provisionsin the EECC. We find that, although the EECC can generally be seen as step into the right direction, the expected effects on investment incentives as well as substantial implementation challenges in combination with a high degree of complexity of the envisaged measures contain substantial potential for improvement.
OF CUSTOMER-CENTRIC APPROACH AND INVOLVEMENT OF CUSTOMERS INTO INNOVATION PROCESS ACROSS CZECH SMES

This paper and further research describe the role of customer-centric approach and involvement of customers into innovation process across Czech small and medium sized companies. Authors use quantitative research at Czech SMEs in the service industry. This particular industry has been selected because of its intangibility. This makes the environment more competitive and therefore a need for corporate diversity is produced. This diversity may be fulfilled by a customer-centric approach and customer co-creation in service innovation. At first, the research is focused on customer-centric approach as whole. As a customer-centric approach are evaluated customer segmentation, feedback detection, solution of dissatisfaction, existence of loyalty system and evidence time between transactions. The second part of the research concerns the usage of customers as the source for the innovation process. As the proactive approach is considered direct participation of customers on innovation process, direct approaching of customer base, collaboration with lead-users in terms of service testing etc. As the reactive approach is considered service innovation based on complaints or compliments, warranty claims or social media monitoring. As a result, the research compares customer-centric approach between SMEs. Subsequently the form of the customer engagement into innovation process is evaluated.
Revised ) Universal Soil Loss Equation ( R / USLE ) : with a view to increasing its global applicability and improving soil loss estimates '

The paper gives an introduction into the motivation and method of using USLE models and describes the conceptual background for all individual factors needed to calculate the annual soil loss amounts with USLE models. This is being done by referring to different case studies as well as widely cited papers of variations of USLE models developed to adapt the model to other regions of the world and improve the model family. The calculation formulas of the USLE factors from those papers are provided in tabular form as well, giving a quick overview of these different approaches. The paper also discusses the limitations of USLE models and points at needed future improvements.
Carbon Markets in Dynamic Perspective: The Optimal Duration Problem

The effectiveness of carbon markets in the reduction of emissions at minimal cost requires several conditions. In a dynamic context the inter-temporal dimension adds new conditions for the desirable performance of the market, and some tradeoffs. One tradeoff is related to the duration of permits. A long permit allows the private agent to optimize using a longer time horizon, but increases the risk associated with the initial allocation of the permits, for example the risk of generating market power. A short permit generates problems with the private agent's planning horizon but allows the planner to correct initial misallocations, in particular in new markets or those that face important uncertainty. These issues are important in the implementation of these systems, especially in developing countries such as the Latin American ones studied in this paper.
Coping strategies, multidimensional competitive anxiety and cognitive threat appraisal : differences across sex, age and type of sport

The purpose of this study was to examine the levels of anxiety, threat perception, and the coping strategies used by Portuguese athletes, and to assess differences between athletes of different sexes, ages and sports. In this investigation there were 550 male and female participating athletes, aged between 15 and 35 years (19.8 ± 4.5), representing several individual and team sports. Subjects filled out the Portuguese versions of the Sport Anxiety Scale [34] and of the Brief COPE [4], as well as the Cognitive Appraisal Scale in Sport Competition – Threat Perception [9]. The results showed that all athletes experienced anxiety and threat perception, and used varied coping strategies, with a preference for adaptative strategies. Female athletes displayed higher levels of anxiety and threat perception, in addition to a greater use of diverse emotionand problem-focused coping strategies; male athletes reported a greater substance abuse. Younger athletes seemed to use less efficacious coping strategies, and athletes from individual sports reported higher levels of anxiety, threat perception and venting of emotions; athletes from team sports reported a greater use of humor and substances.